Mar 1, 2023
How To Be Awesome
At Doing The Hard Thing Consistently.. oftentimes without seeing
results or many results… but continuing to do it
anyway.
It’s what I think
is actually the secret to being successful at most
things.
Most people try the
thing - whatever that is - sending sales emails, lifting weights,
eating healthy, starting a side business, tuning out anything
negative, losing weight… but don’t keep going it long
enough.
First we need to
make sure the goal is the right goal for you. After that,
we’re set… we just have to keep doing the things, over and over,
that we know will get us there. To be able to have a very
clear focus on what needs to be done and have the mental toughness
to not quit when you don’t see immediate
results.
Here’s how you do
it - you set-up a system to focus on and enjoy the process rather
than focus on the end goal of trophy or reward.
Today’s podcast is
all about how to consistently do the hard things.
Because here’s the
thing - if you commit and really give full effort and do it long
enough - it would be completely unrealistic to not see progress and
growth.
I’m telling you the
secret sauce in getting what you want is doing the hard thing over
and over and over again, even when you don’t see results yet.
It’s the ability to avoid distraction, ignore outside noise,
delay gratification and keep doing the hard things required to make
awesome things happen.
I’ve worked with so
many very successful entrepreneurs and now I’m having daily calls
with women who are really building and growing and progressing
personally and professionally and the common denominator is not an
intense early morning routine or inherited money to invest or a
high level academic education.
While those can
sometimes be a factor, it’s more the ability of these women to wake
up and keep doing the hard thing.
Same goes with
fitness or lifting weights. For most of us, it takes so damn
long to see results. So it’s not easy to keep going.
It’s hard to do hard things without seeing or feeling the
reward as soon as we want.
Here are some of
the key points Lindsay talks about in this
episode:
-Keep getting
uncomfortable
-Enjoy the process
- even when it’s painful
-Realize that it
would be unrealistic to think you won’t see change and progress if
you keep going.
Most people quit
before they even have a chance.
-Head down,
blinders on. Your opinion is the only one that matters right
now and it doesn’t matter what other people are
doing.
-Listen to David
Goggins and Andrew Huberman for more in depth on this
-Expect discomfort
and embrace it.
It’s all about
managing expectations.
Goggins says
“embrace the suck”
-Create a solid
plan
-Build it into your
schedule or routine
-Decide and commit
- there’s no decision to be made - just need to
execute
-Hold yourself
accountable
-Hard work becomes
harder when you’re doing it for the result or reward or end
goal
-Andrew Huberman is
a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford
University
-Andrew Huberman
talks about a Stanford study - kids liked to draw and gave them a
reward - like a sticker when they drew. Then they stopped giving
them the sticker- then they were less likely to draw because they
didnt get the reward anymore.
When we receive
rewards - or give ourselves rewards- we associate less pleasure to
it.
-According to
Huberman, dopamine is released in response to experiences that are
pleasurable or rewarding, such as eating delicious food or
achieving a goal. Dopamine helps to reinforce these behaviors,
making it more likely that we will repeat them in the
future.
-If you get a peak
in dopamine from a reward - it lowers baseline
-Makes you do it
for the rewards
-Growth Mindset -
striving is the end goal - we are always growing- we never reach
the destination - we are focused on the effort
itself.
-Learning to access
the rewards from the EFFORT not the result.
-Tell yourself -
this effort is awesome
-Forcing yourself
to stick to a hard workout
-You can evoke a
dopamine release from the challenge you are in
-If you are focused
only on the goal - you enjoy the process less and makes it more
painful
-Dopamine increases
the amount of energy we have and sharpness of
mind
-The feeling of
effort is the mental reward.
-Tell yourself- I
know this doesn't feel good - but I love it.
-In the moments of
the biggest suck - this is painful and because it’s painful it will
increase my baseline dopamine later - but also I know in this
moment I am doing it by choice and because I love
it.
-David Goggins
talks about turning the effort into the reward.
-Allows you to stay
focused and not get distracted.
-Learning to spike
dopamine from effort itself - not before or after is
key!
Cheers to all the
hard things! And doing them over and over
again!