"I am just not motivated to go to gym"
"I am just not motivated to study"
Do you remember the last time you admired someone for his work-ethic? And you felt like you just did not have that motivation? You just could never get to the same level of determination?
What I'm going to tell you now might seem a bit contradicting, but motivation does not get anything done. All that motivation is is a tool to fire you up. To get you started.
What actually gets things done is habits that are strongly ingrained into our brains.
Nobody that goes to gym every day or studies extra-time on a daily basis has a motivational debate about doing so every time they are going for it.
They just do it. They dont consider a no. Their brain just knows what to do and they go with that. Not doing so would feel weird. And that is exactly, what habits do. They put you on auto-pilot. Execution mode.
The power of habits
If you use habits wisely, you will never again have to debate whether or not you will start with your work. There is no debate about going to gym or studying. There is no debate about practicing for hours. In my opinion, habits is the most powerful tool when it comes to completely transforming your life.
66 Days to form a habit
The newest of studies show that it takes about 66 days to form new habits. Thats exactly the time it takes for your brain to reprogram itself and make something new a part of you. Once youre over this period, you won't forget to get your things done ever, and you won't have to make it a debate. Your brain goes on autopilot.
1 habit at a time
Before we actually go into how you create new habits for yourself, I want to mention that where most people actually fail and I personally still do some times is that they want too much. It can be really tempting to change everything about you at the same time. Who does not want to be good at university, gaming, socializing and everything else they are doing?
One of the key ingredients to master an area is to focus purely on that one area. If you want to change your nature, which you are basically doing by forming new habits or getting rid of bad ones, you will face a brick wall.
You can beat that resistence with alot of willpower, but dont expect to be able to change everything at once. There will be too much resistence and in the end, you will just stay the same.
How to form a habit and the difficulties that most people fail at
The most important rule when you're forming a new habit is consistency. If you want to change as a person, if you want to adopt new values or start a gym-routine, you have to do it right.
My tip: Before you form a new habit, decide if its really worth it for you. Are you really willing to go trough with it for every single day? For about 2 months? Because I'm telling you, it can and it will be hard.
To actually create a habit, there is only one thing you need to do. The most important rule is that you can not skip a single day of your routine. You have to pull through the entire time.
Otherwise, you will not be able to form your habit and you might as well just start over. This is unfortunately where most people fail. Everyone wants to become greater, but they only push it for a week, maybe 2. Then, they become lazy and give up.
When you struggle getting to work on your habit, make sure to remember: Reducing downtime is everything. Stop thinking, start right away!
Once you built your habit, things will be easy
The fact that most people actually give up when they are so close to inhabiting new things is actually really saddening for one paticular reason. Building a habit will cost you incredible amounts of willpower and from day to day, it will be harder to fight your way through that issue.
But the end of the road is, that once your brain learned about that new habit, willpower wont be an issue anymore. Suddenly, that factor fades away.
Do you really think that people that go to gym on a daily basis have this incredible amount of willpower and motivation every time they are going? The trick is that those people built strong habits around it and they just go. Before they can even think about it.
Useful habits to aquire
1) Making a schedule (on a daily basis)
One of the most amazing habits I started to develop in my opinion is to make yourself a schedule for every day of your life. Even when you have a lot of free-time and just want to relax, you can often still find one or two things you should really get done.
You write that on your schedule, and you will get that done. (Example: Doing the dishes, cleaning your room)
2) Getting something done every day - learn to make work a part of your free-time that you enjoy
I really like the idea of this habit. Its something that I started doing when I started doing a schedule for every day. The idea is, that there is always something you can do to work on yourself or something you should be getting done, even if the time you invest is very minimal.
By simply creating a habit of doing at least some amount of work each and every day, I really stopped caring much for 'having to work'.
I dont care anymore if I have to study. I dont care anymore if I have to work on a project. It just became normal. Of course, some days it can be a bit much, but in general, its just part of my every day life, just like sleeping and eating is.
I put my mind to it that every day, thus if I have a huge work-load, its like any other day, just a bit more of the usual. =)
(An example: Before I started going to university, I tried to form a habit of studying an hour each day. I actually went trough with studying about 35 days of maths, each day an hour+. I still pretty much follow this habit of at least using one hour of my day studying or doing something similar. Whats awesome about it? I dont care that I 'have to study'!)
3) Building a gym-routine
This one is obvious. Watch the video if you want to hear my thoughts on it!
4) Cleaning up your room every day - dont let things buckle up
Having a fresh and clean workspace can be incredibly powerful to your performance and motivation to get things started. I used to do this every day and decided to implement this as a habit again.
5) Dont let things buckle up
Not just when it comes to cleaning your room, you should get things done before they buckle up. Create a habit of getting things done as soon as possible. Do the dishes before it will take you an hour to do them. Keep a clean room before you need hours to clean it up. Sort your documents from university on a consistent basis before you have to spend hours on it, missing half of them. Do your payments right away, so you will not forget about doing so! [...]
This will make your life so easy, so sorted and you will feel in complete control over everything. Its also an incredible confidence-booster. I combine this often with my daily-schedule. Writing down the couple of things I need to get done before they buckle up and then just going for it.
6) Observe what others do well and adapt those things
Remember the last blog-entry about Adopting Useful values? If you wanna develop great character traits, learn from other people! Literally everyone will offer you something great that you can learn from.
I have friends that are incredibly good at talking to strangers, I have some that are incredibly generous, some that make you feel absolutely special when youre around them. I try to actively understand how they do that and learn from them.
There is so much you can learn from other people. Stop being so self-centered, let go of your ego and become more than what you are.
7) First comes work, then comes freetime. Build a contrast around free- and worktime
Nowadays, when I'm scrolling the internet, a lot of the times I am asking myself whether or not I could find a better way to spend my time right now.
It is okay to relax, lay back and enjoy your time sometimes. But often times, people start creating a habit of just scrolling the internet for hours, checking twitter every 5 minutes and posting on reddit.
Make sure you dont fall into that category. Develop a sense of time. Give yourself some time to enjoy the internets, but earn that by doing other things like studying before doing so. Practice some stuff you want to improve in, and then start relaxing.
You will love your free-time much more if you actually earned it.
also read about:
5 ways on how to adapt new values - becoming your greatest idol
Dealing with defeat in competition
How not to care what people think about you
managing huge amounts of work - never getting overwhelmed by sheer amount
Ego - Understanding the most important concept about our self
Changing your life - how to start
Dealing with defeat in competition
How not to care what people think about you
managing huge amounts of work - never getting overwhelmed by sheer amount
Ego - Understanding the most important concept about our self
Changing your life - how to start
