Motivation, Discipline and Switching Lanes

Progress and Numbers

Brian Longo

Moving forward often means leaving things behind. But rather than focusing on the things you’re giving up and feeling deprived, let’s focus on the things we’re adding to our lives.

Some people are highly motivated. And others are disciplined. Many are both and I believe most are like me — somewhere bouncing back and forth between the two. A client once told me about this dichotomy — when you’re motivated you move like there’s wind behind your sail. Progress spreads like wildfire. You feel a certain momentum that can carry you, and hopefully the traction you gained can keep you going when motivation is fleeting. And when it fades to the background it may be there, but more like an ember than a flame. That’s when discipline kicks in. You’ve covered ground in your time of motivation that won’t be given up so easily. Here it’s your job to keep things in working order until the wave of motivation comes back around, because it will.

During these times of motivation it might be easy to deny things that challenge the progress you desire to make. This helps, sure, but I don’t want this to become the focus of your effort.

There’s this oft repeated fitness doctrine — every action takes you further from or closer to your goal. And while there’s certainly truth to it, I find this mindset to be counter productive. An all or nothing, black or white mindset is counterproductive to well-rounded wellness. We’re trying to develop a lifestyle here. And we want it to evolve into an effortless approach. Getting in the left lane and hauling ass for periods of time will be helpful and maybe even necessary to get to your desired outcome. Right lane and scenic effort route efforts have tremendous utility in the long game. The key is to continue moving towards progress.

Focus on addition before and more often than subtraction. When the time comes where we’re more dependent on discipline than motivation, the grounds we’ll focus on maintaining are the positive habits we added. We’re looking to circumvent feelings of deprivation. Let motivation handle cold turkeys. And even when motivation is high, let’s keep some discipline around to remind us that it’s ok to enjoy ourselves with pit stops from the left lane.