This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Koree.
I’m stuck in a triangle between things I desire, what it takes to achieve the result, and whether or not I want to do the work. For instance, I have a strong desire to run a marathon in under three hours to time-qualify to run the Boston Marathon – something I’ve wanted for two decades. I know exactly what it’s going to take because I’ve trained for marathons before and lost significant weight, but that was 15 years ago when I was younger and lighter. I know the work won’t be easy – it might be simple and straightforward, but it’s physically demanding. How do I reconcile wanting the goal but not wanting to do the work? You teach about only doing things you want to do, but I don’t want to do this training even though I want the result.
You have to realize that even though you may not like the work in the moment, you’re still doing what you want to do because it’s toward the goal you want.
What you tell yourself in your head about the work is what determines whether it’s easy or not. If you’re complaining about it in your mind, it’s going to be 10 times as hard. If you just say “this is what it is, the price is the price, I’m going to enjoy the process,” and then find ways to enjoy the process – whether it’s small milestones you make every day – then it becomes manageable.
When you set a goal like that, you’ve got to get rid of everything that’s not that goal. You might have to give up any counterproductive activities, eating certain foods, maybe some sleep, and you just have to be okay with it. Just be like, “okay, I want this, I want to do it, I’m going to get this done and then that’s off my list.”
You have to change your attitude about the work that has to be done.
Everything I’ve gone after in my life, I didn’t necessarily want to do the things that were required to do it,
but I wanted the goal so much I was willing. I just changed my attitude about it.
I learned this early on when I was on the forklift. I fucking hated that job – hated it like you would not believe. I changed my attitude about it and everything changed. It became easy because I realized so much of the resistance was in my head. I began to find things about it that I actually liked that I didn’t even realize were there.
You have to adapt your attitude to the things you have to do so that you’re not fighting it in your mind every day. Navy SEALs all want to be Navy SEALs, but nobody wants to do BUDS training. They change their attitude to get through it because if they don’t, they’ll never get through it.
