because there is no other way to keep doing them.
“There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making them want to do it.” —Dale Carnegie
Dear Authentic Introvert,
Despite having an action plan that aligns with your goal, following it consistently is a lot of work.
Most people know what they should be doing to get the outcome they’re hoping for and yet they procrastinate and keep looking for motivation.
The problem with our brain is that the anticipation of an end goal is not enough for it to take action.
It rather looks for instant gratifications.
Even though you started exercising daily for the sake of your own health, you still want to tell some people and be acknowledged and/or praised so you can feel proud of yourself.
It seems that in the absence of these validations and instant rewards, we quickly lose motivation to continue.
This begs the question: how to really want to do things that you have to?
The first step would be to remove the most addictive stuff from your life and if you happened to read my rant the other day, you know you must get rid of your phone.
Because this makes the problem even worse by making your brain habitual to those dopamine rushes.
And you end up constantly negotiating with yourself on how many more reels you can watch before you are shouted at, and you absolutely have to move your lazy ass.
As a result, your brain seeks rewards even for doing the routine stuff like taking a shower when you stink.
With that out of the way, you can now actually focus on a system that pulls you from that rut and gets you to work once and for all.
Our aim here is to turn doing what’s needed into a habit, which typically means you have to do it for at least 3 weeks without fail.
And to achieve this, you must find something that you like so much that you can act on it without thinking twice.
For instance, I don’t like waking up early, but I know that if I do, I can start my day with an amazing creative session to write. And doing so keeps me happy the whole day.
But that’s still not enough to make me wake up at 6.30 so here’s what I did:
If I am able to wake up at 6.30, I write and then I exercise while watching my favorite show on Netflix. And if I don’t wake up, I have to let go of Netflix for the day.
Doing so has proved very effective in not just making me wake up but slowly increase the duration for my spot jogging.
Because the longer I jog for, the more I get to watch.
This also teaches the brain that there is no reward without work – something that aligns with how reality works.
You just can’t have a rewarding doomscrolling session on your phone without first putting food on your plate.
The sooner you learn this the better because the world is no longer designed to feed the ones who don’t work for it.
What’s the one thing that can make you want to work for what you need?
Leave a Reply