If you're just starting this article series, go to part 1. Otherwise this may make less sense.
So, 30 days and counting of 5am wake up along with an awesome morning routine. Courtesy of the Miricle Morning.
Yet, even with the gumption to pull that off, I still find myself getting distracted by petty, time wasting tasks. I have a large project ahead of me, erasing old, deeply rooted habits of saving important stuff for later and doing fun stuff for now.
It is a totally impossible task, if I try to brute-force it. All my base, animal instincts inherited from back when I was an amoeba tell me to go towards pleasure and away from pain.
And generally high priority tasks are scary, difficult, and uncomfortable. My animal-self wants to get the hell away from that stimulus as fast as possible.
That part of me is basically a horny sloth. As long as it's well fed and generally comfortable, it's not going anywhere very quickly. If danger is coming, only then will it work hard, and only until the danger is past.
If I try and fight that system head on, I loose. It's like swimming against a quickly flowing river. Eventually, I get tired. I run out of willpower. And get washed back down stream. The river never gets tired.
I need to engage a whole different, higher-order motivational system if I want to change that pattern of behavior, long-term. Or create an environment that redirects my animal system to get me where I want to go. The proverbial carrot and stick apparatus. Might as well do both.
The environmental change is easier and faster to set up, but it is also fragile and short-lived. Once the environment is gone, we often revert to our old ways. Like being in work, or school, and then being unemployed, or graduated. We may be very productive in those engineered environments, but once they're gone, many of us turn into limp noodles. Until we feel enough of a cash pinch (or self-loathing) to re-engage the animal system out of fear. But that's still not getting us to our dreams.
The higher order motivational system is poorly understood and rarely taught. So, though it's not unpleasant to learn, it ends up being hard to master. Even the people who do seem to understand it, are not necessarily good at teaching it to others. So they write interesting and inspiring books that people read and get excited about and try to implement until they run out of willpower or the initial excitement dies down and then they're back where they started.
The change is a fundamental one. It is like teaching someone who's been blind since birth, about Van Gough's paintings. You can't be told, you must see it for yourself. Feel what it feels like to switch gears. Let's give it a name. I'll call it "Ride the Snake" in honor of motivational speaker Jimmy Tango (This is an old SNL skit. Pardon the commercial that will likely come before it. Couldn't find it on youtube in decent quality. Also, this has nothing to do with the motivational system I'm talking about. Just the name "Ride the Snake". And some motivational/heath fad speakers.)
I am still blearily wiping the sleep from my eyes in this process, so I'm as yet ill-equipped to talk about how one may "Ride the Snake."
But I'm beginning to feel the edges of it. So perhaps, when I do have a good understanding, I can help people like me, who had no grasp of it to start with. I feel like many motivational speakers start out as Snake Riders already, and so can't help people as sloth-like as I was.
Like so much of what I'm doing now, my motto (at least to myself) is, "Look, if even I could get this, you certainly can."
If you want the collected wisdom, or at least information, that I've been accumulating, I'll try to give you the essence of it now, via my own rudimentary understanding. Here it is:
Instead of trying to get yourself to do things because you've been told you should, or you think you're supposed to, or you're afraid not to, get yourself to do things by focusing intensely on the things that you actually want to do. Repeatedly and vividly bring that vision to mind. Be specific about what you want. Believe in your own ability to achieve it. Break it down into non-intimidating bite-sized steps. And be honest and aware of your current position in relation to where you are heading. Get in the habit of doing the next step, right away, first thing, as soon as you have a good next step.
And, if you're not into spirituality you're missing the most important element of this being successful, the secret sauce. Confidence in (helped by direct experience of) your own highest self. That which you truly are. That which is the all in all. Which is benevolent, capable, and available 24/7 via the help-line of your heart for tech support with your life. You are welcome to not belive me, but I can't exclude this in good conscience, since it has been the single most transformative element in my life to date.
That's it. But all the information is totally useless to the point of being a waste of time, if it's not implemented. It would be more useful to practice doing any one of those things, rather than to read about all of them. So go now, first thing, and do the one little, doable thing that would make the most positive difference in your life.
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