Tag: determination

Doing it when you don’t want to

Posted on by philipdodson

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Our levels of inspiration and motivation naturally vary, it’s normal, after all, we are human and different factors combine at times to affect them.

No matter how upbeat or ‘on it’ you are, there will be days when it is hard to muster the enthusiasm for something and that is OK.

Sometimes it is good to say ‘fuck it’ and not worry too much. However, when that becomes a habit, then we can find ourselves saying that too often.

Doing your exercises, or meditating, or ticking off everything on your action list is easy when you are on top form. It is a lot harder when you are not.

However, if you really want something to happen in your life badly enough, then you do that thing even when you don’t want to and that is the real test of how much you want something.

The more you do that, the more you move towards your goals and the more inspired you are to do that thing. It is a bit like building a muscle, it’s painful to start with, but the more you push the easier it becomes.

Have the odd day off, but commitment when you don’t feel it shows how much you really want it.

Keep going

Posted on by philipdodson

Some days you feel that all the effort and hard work is not paying off, a couple things don’t go your way, you seem to hit all the red lights, the train is delayed and so on.

It happens like this in life sometimes, however, we are programmed to think that this is all part of some catastrophe and it only reaffirms the ‘truths’ we tell ourselves. An almost ‘see I told you, I knew you’d fail’ and other such pessimistic responses in our heads occur or even from those around us. We are conditioned to think that worst will happen from an early age in life.

The truth is, the world isn’t against us, people aren’t against us, and some days, shit happens. But 99.999999% of the time it is shit that we can deal with, that passes and often it teaches us to improve, remodel and get further ahead on our journey.

However, if we spent more of our time recognising the great things that happen every day, then we’d notice the ‘hiccups’ a lot less.

The truth is, stick with the plan, keep going. Rovio, you might not have heard of them if they’d quit, were a struggling gaming app developer in Finland. 5 years in they thought this isn’t going well, but someone started to sketch some Angry Birds, and 2 years later more than a billion people had downloaded the app.

There’s always the instant gratification route of the modern business culture, that says ‘fail fast’, ‘pivot’ and move on. Society often does not encourage patience as dissatisfaction feeds consumption and that makes money.

But the truth is, often the best things in life or business, happen to ones who persevere, who keep going, no matter what comes up. Show some patience, bad days pass and are rarely as bad as they seem.

Always stay true to what you believe.