Gain Motivation by Doing What You Hate

// June 21st, 2009 // Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Personal Development, Self Improvement

Gain Motivation by Doing What You Hate

Image courtesy of wcmcwi

The aim of this post is to enhance your motivation through a technique known as ‘work’. The fancy technique draws together some of the important principles of gaining motivation, simply put – do what you hate, increase your motivation for everything else.

Why the hell would I ‘work’?

A lot of people do it all the time. It’s one of those petty social conditioning malarkeys that draw people in for fear of no money. But, in the reality – none of us like work. Therefore it’s the perfect thing to use to gain motivation.

If you ‘work’, you’ll know it takes two exceedingly clever abilities to force yourself in everyday. They are will-power and self-discipline. These two abilities are abused daily when they are leashed into place by the social conditioning to follow trends that make us look stupid and waste our time.

I can’t imagine the will-power and self-discipline it takes to bend over and take it from your boss for years; I’ve only had three menial jobs which in total lasted 4 months. But those 4 months taught me a valuable lesson; don’t work towards other peoples goals, work towards your own. This thinking motivates me and has led me to a situation where I don’t need to work and I’m happily financially supporting myself through this website as well other highly obtaining sources. This is something you can achieve for yourself, if you wish. All you need is that extra shove of motivation to get your daily fantasies into reality.

Before I get caught up in the examples I’d like to give, I’d first like to explain what will-power and self-discipline is. Will-power is our ability to say no to chocolate when a friend offers because she’s jealous of your successful diet or to say no to that gorgeous woman because we’ve just remembered the only condom in our wallet is an extra large for the novelty. Basically, it’s our ability to control inner unnecessary and harmful impulses.

Self-discipline on the other hand is the stamina required to persevere with our job, our partner, our studies or our dog, when he’s wet. Together will-power and self-discipline make a deadly combination that’ll make us do all kinds of nasty things in the name of the greater good, which can be tapped to improve our motivation.

How to tap will-power and self-discipline

The best way to tap these resources is to aim them at the villains of motivation. Using our will-power we can laugh at procrastination and using self-discipline we can stay the course and keep the eye of the tiger. Knowing this should allow you to figure out what I’m getting at here. I’m basically pointing out that in order to steroid our motivation we need to do things we hate and I’ve got a lovely list.

How about taking 15 minutes out today and trying these activities out, you’ll feel great after them through a sense of achievement so there’s nothing to lose.

Activities

• Walk the dog in the rain. Ok, maybe you can’t do this today, but you can the next time it rains. If you haven’t got a dog, go pretend to walk one, it’ll work wonders
• Talk to someone you generally avoid. That’s right, go and talk to that weird guy who you believe is stalking you or worse yet you could give your mother a ring, especially if you’ve not talked to her in awhile
• Stop biting your nails. Stop for a week and see the difference in will-power
• Go on a diet and try exercising. Diets are an utter bugger to follow, they’re truly hard work. What better to increase your will-power and motivation by cutting out all your luxuries in life
• Drink juice in the morning? Instead of drinking the one you like, change it to one you hate and drink that instead
• Wash all the dishes. Wash them all, nice and clean. Especially if they aren’t yours, it’ll boost your will-power and self-discipline which in turn will boost your motivation.

Doing these simple tasks could change your life. They could give you those extra points of motivation required for you to stop taking orders from your lower IQ boss and leave to start your own business, or it could be the exact thing you need to not take life so seriously and relax more knowing you are in control. Most importantly though, the more you do these boring, bland, horrible ‘work’ tasks you fill up your tank of motivation, getting it ready for the getaway when you decide to kidnap your dream and force it into reality.

Craig is a 22-year-old student currently studying psychology at Bournemouth University. He runs a self improvement blog and community filled with useful advice. His main aim is to help people exceed their expectations and reach their true potential.

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