Passion is Lubricant for Discipline

What’s it all for?

Why do what you’re doing? What’s your greater goal?

You’ll never achieve greatness unless you care deeply about your mission.

Why not? Why can’t I be awesome for 2 hours every day, then watch porn, get high, and gorge myself on Unlimited Pastabowli™ at Olive Garden for only $7.99?
That’s simple, Jack. Would your ideal self eat at fucking Olive Garden, or would the perfect version of you learn to cook tastier, healthier meals at home? Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of the “unlimited” genre of food, but becoming better is more important to me than as many buttery carbohydrates as I can cram into my mouth-hole.

Passion is lubricant for discipline. That’s the title of this post, so allow me to elucidate.

Willpower is the finite resource we use to make ourselves produce long-term wins against short-term displeasure (e.g. diet & exercise, learning an instrument/language)

Discipline is the habitual application of willpower towards achieving a greater long-term goal.

Passion is loving your long-term goal more than anything else.

I want to be a writer. Here I am, writing. It’s slow, and for six months I’ve been slowly, slowly, slowly gaining traction. I’ve doubted myself, and my productivity has gone up and down more than Cedar Point’s Cyclone… If only riding out a slump was as much fun. I love writing, though. Frequently I don’t feel like it, but I write every single day because I have a broad, long-term view of time. It’s a grind, but my passion for my craft applies oil to the grind for as little mental friction as possible. My work ethic, my willpower, and my discipline are lubricated before every battle with frustration like a big, beautiful, manly man getting ready to wrestle.

I get too excited about the future. I get so excited it turns to angry frustration; I move so slow sometimes it’s infuriating! I curse myself for wasting so much time. I’m only 22… If only I’d learned what I know now 5 years ago! Alas, time travel is impossible for us puny imperfect organisms. Someday our bioengineered progeny will leap through time, but today we must live with our choices. It’s OK, though. Whether you’re fifteen or fifty, there’s still plenty of time!

We can’t succumb to our furious, frustrated angst for faster improvement, but we also can’t let ourselves fall into dull complacency. Let’s meet somewhere in the middle, then. Let’s feel that furious passion for forward momentum, but let’s focus it, control it. Let’s use passion to fuel our daily appreciation of the smaller satisfactions in life.

What do I mean by lubricant?
Lube makes things smooth. Lube removes friction.
A passionate mindset broadens our view of time to give us a reason to be better.
Therefore, focusing on passion removes friction from the daily self-discipline grind.

My love for writing and my desire to improve give me the inspiration I need to do it every day. You never see pro athletes who don’t like their sport. Sure, some of them grow to hate it, but every single pro athlete has a genuine love for their game. They’d never spend 10 hours a day every day of their life to master a game they didn’t enjoy.
If you hated broccoli, you wouldn’t waste your time crafting a perfect broccoli recipe. You’d spend that time cooking carrots instead.

It all comes down to how you feel. What’s most important to you? What excites you?
I don’t care much about money. I’d love to drive a Mercedes, but I’d rather cut off one of my fingers than take on massive debt to buy a fucking hunk of metal overcompensation.

I care deeply about my my health, my environment and my education. Money buys better food, nicer neighborhoods, and it buys books, lessons, and access to information. I don’t give a fuck about buying a new car to impress my dipshit neighbors. I want money because I want freedom. I want the freedom to be the best version of myself, and that requires makin’ moolah.

So you want to be a famous rock star. Are you in a band? Have you written lyrics? How many hours do you practice every day? Famous rock-stars are so passionate about the music that they live and die for it. Many of my friends play guitar, and they all dream of being rich & famous. They practice now and then, but they don’t feel like it every day. They’re scared of losing their comfortable lifestyle. Practicing for 9 hours a day, living life like a fucking spartan, seems silly to people used to living every day without a greater purpose.

Nobody dreams of being a fucking desk-jockey. As a kid, did you ever see a wage-slave on TV sharpening a pencil, shuffling a stack of memos and think, “Man oh man, boy oh boy, golly gee I’d sure love to be like him!” No, you didn’t. In my generation, we wanted to be Tony Hawk. We wanted to be Indiana Jones. We invented Karate moves in the back yard; we were Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan rolled into one. Then we went to school.

At school, they tell us:

“Ha ha, Ho ho, you can’t be like them! You must count the beans! You must be like us, for this is how a Grown-Up™ behaves! Get a real job, find yourself a wife, and then, maybe, if you’re lucky, when you turn 65 you can retire and do all that silly bullshit you always dreamed about.”

Fuck school. Learn because you care. Find the thing that intrigues you, the thing that lights a fire in your gut, and devote your life to feeding that curious fire.
The education system in America is designed to produce obedient workers. Even the greatest teachers in our public schools are so bogged down by regulations that all strides toward real education are made struggling against the current. The system we use was invented in Prussia to mass-produce obedient workers. Before that, education was real. It wasn’t anything like our sadistic shitshow of a school system.

School might have killed that childish desire to live out your dream, but it’s still in you. Somewhere in your gut you want to be cool. You want to be fucking Indiana Jones, so go out and buy a whip and a hat and start digging for treasure! It doesn’t have to be a big deal, just get out there and do something. If you want to act, join an improv group. If you want to be a musician, start a band. If you want to be a writer, write (and finish) something. You can worry about everything else after you get started.

But what if you don’t know what you want to do? You went to school, you got your diploma, and now you sit in an office counting beans and sharpening pencils and dreaming about being anywhere but there.

Even if you don’t have a dream to fuel your passion, start by working to energize yourself. Start caring about yourself.
Are you fat? Buy smaller dinner plates.
Are you ugly? Get a new haircut and some cool threads.
Are you awkward? Read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People.

Sit there in your chair. Read this, and think, hmm, that’s interesting, I like what he’s saying.
Then forget. You’ll forget this, and you’ll go back to your routine.
Do you ever forget what you were doing only a moment before?

It’s OK to be slow-going. It may take you 10 years to figure out what you wanted to be doing for the past 10 years, but don’t let that stop you.
If your life lacks passion, expose yourself to new things until you feel a spark. A spark is all it takes to light the fire in your gut. That fire inside you, that furious passion, is the most important factor in achieving fulfillment. Becoming the greatest version of yourself requires hard work every single day. The only way to diligently work every day, even when you don’t feel like it, is to be passionate about your purpose. No matter what, you must be certain that you’re making a difference. Every day, take one step towards building something bigger than yourself.

Every day I think about my beautiful future. My destiny is REAL in my mind.

If my house burned down, if my friends and family abandoned me, if I lost everyone and everything, I would smile with the knowledge that my new pain would be forging me into a greater man faster than I could ever do comfortably.

I refuse to accept the pathetic path of comfort that society lays down in front of me. My passion for my art, my desire to thrive in this cutthroat world, and my thirst to be a man worthy of respect all drive me forward towards my ideal self. Do you want an easy comfortable life, or would you rather bust your ass every day for ten years to create something more meaningful?

How much is your dream worth?

Fight Yourself

No. Not literally.

To do anything worth doing, you gotta give yourself a swift kick in the ass. Your body and mind will be resisting change the whole way, and it’s your job to put yourself back on the right track each and every time. It’s unavoidable. This is just how people work. No matter how long you’ve been persistent for, you’ll eventually have one bad day.

I read an excellent post on Wait But Why yesterday that really got me thinking. For a long time, I’ve struggled a lot with procrastination. I’ve had some similar ideas from my own experience, but I’ve never seen it explained and illustrated so perfectly.

In short, when we try to do the work that really matters, we often get distracted by instant gratification. We make great, consistent progress once we’re deep into the flow of our work, but moving ourselves from that murky period of self-loathing filled procrastination requires more and more willpower as time goes on.

I won’t get too deep into the content from the article, but I’ve been thinking about this topic for quite awhile. I’ve been working since August of last year to create positive daily habits, and I’ve made more holistic progress since then than any other time of my life. First starting out, though, it was an uphill battle. When I became seriously interested in self-improvement during my second year of college, I had lost around fifty pounds the previous year. Obviously I felt pretty good about it, but I wasn’t sure what the next step was. I had a vague idea of what my priorities and values were at that point, but I was still very naive in my approach to life. I had this vague attitude of not taking life too seriously that was great for creating a positive mindset, but was actually detrimental to building forward momentum in my life.

I ended up spending a lot of time playing video games and watching TV. Pretty much every day I would wake up and do the same old shit. I was making great efforts to get healthier, but my routine for the other aspects of my life were sorely lacking. Basically the only useful skill I learned in my first year of college was how not to be fat; I didn’t have any useful real life skills. I lacked discipline. I figured that one day I’d write a book, but I rationalized a bunch of stupid reasons why I wasn’t writing anything.

Eventually, nearly a year ago, I started writing a journal. I can’t tell you how huge of a step this was for me. Beginning to write down my thoughts sparked a series of changes that I never expected. It’s difficult to stick with a journal at first, but now it’s a permanent part of my nightly routine. If you aren’t already writing one, do it. Do it now. You’ll find yourself coherently expressing for the first time thoughts you’ve been having for a while; not only that, new ideas and feelings and opinions will come to the surface that you never even knew were there. Personally, the biggest benefit I’ve had from writing a journal has been a log of my progress. There were days when all I did was sitting around watching Netflix. Writing out my experiences forced me to examine my life. When you write down, “Today I didn’t do much of anything.” enough times, you start to feel like a piece of shit, which is great motivation. I ended up thinking a lot about the difference between what I was doing and what I wanted to be doing, and eventually I starting making more changes in my life because my journal helped me sort out all the emotional bullshit that was holding me back.

Fighting yourself isn’t easy. Honestly, the only way to do it effectively is to cut yourself off from all distractions. If your phone is distracting you from your work, leave it on silent face-down out of your sight. Refocus your attention entirely on what really matters in your life. Maybe read an actual book instead of scrolling through forums, blogs, and social media.

People tend not to change. Changing is hard, and staying the same is easy. That’s why no matter how far you progress, you still have to fight yourself to keep moving. Luckily, improving ourselves doesn’t have to always be a struggle. Why? Because momentum.

If you spend a week jerking off and watching cartoons all day, on that eighth day you’re really going to want to jerk off and watch cartoons. Your body has been programmed to jump right into that negative routine. Most of us have experienced this with whatever our lazy sin of choice is (Netflix for many of us). Now, you don’t have to give up all your favorite shows, games, and whatever other mindless entertainment gets your rocks off. Just quit all the meaningless bullshit. Quit “just watching something”. If you want to watch every episode of a great show because it’s great, that’s fucking awesome. Do it at night after you’ve gotten some work done, but enjoy that god damn show with vigor! Consuming well-made media is a great way to spend your spare hours, but just watching something to watch something is how fools spend 20 years before finally asking themselves where their life went. Think about what you’re doing. Think about why you’re doing it. 

When you look at yourself and realize that many of your idle instantly gratifying actions provide no benefit to your life or your goals, you’ll have two choices: either keep feeding yourself empty entertainment and self-loathing, or buckle down and get some work done. I only have to spend a few hours productively before I start to feel really good about it. There’s no better feeling than finally relaxing after spending the day the right way. Make the choice when you wake up to instantly jump into that positive routine of self-development. Take a break after 4 hours spent practicing skills, learning information, and exercising your body. Spend the time to truly commit to improving yourself just a little bit. Report back to me with how fucking awesome you feel.

Thoughts on Productivity

Many of you out there probably beat yourself up trying to force yourself to do things that are beneficial to you. You say to yourself, “I should go to the gym more”, or “I should read a book instead of jerking off to tentacle porn all day”. These are natural thoughts, as most of us are constantly in an endless cycle of worthless media and instant gratification. Here’s what you need to do in order to break this cycle:

Find things that are good for you that you actually like.

I know, right? Seems pretty simple; you’d think people would do this on their own. Unfortunately, most people just aren’t in the habit of doing things that are both healthy (in whatever way) and enjoyable. Instead, some guys force themselves to hit the gym, hating every minute of it. Some people starve themselves trying to get thin, then eventually binge-eat 24 donuts.

Trying to force yourself to be productive is the perfect way to become unproductive. 

Personally, I really enjoy jogging in the park. I love feeling the fresh air on my face. Running has always been my favorite form of exercise. Something about the way you lose yourself in the heat of it resonates with me. Other guys love to play basketball at the gym. If fucking street luge or parkour is your jam, then get out there and do that shit. Find the type of exercise that you love doing, whether it’s mud wrestling, skeet shooting or pole-vaulting.The way to NOT get into shape is to force yourself to drudge through a workout that you flat out don’t enjoy.

This line of thinking translates perfectly into anything you want to do. Figure out what the thing is that means something to you. Most people already have some “dream” that they think of or dream about while they waste their lives at their day-job. When you begin to chase that dream, you’ll feel a surge of productive energy that you’ve never felt before. Quit doing useless shit that doesn’t help you in some way, and turn that time into useful hours of work towards achieving your goal. When you put your time towards becoming the best version of yourself, you’ll find yourself enjoying the time you spent working on it. You’ll find yourself simply enjoying life more, and that’s something worth working for.

Related reading:

http://boldanddetermined.com/2012/06/12/13-productivity-drugs-tools-tips-tricks-and-hacks/