bootcamp motivation (or how to kick your own ass)

If there’s one thing I’m really good at, it’s being critical. I have my own drill sergeant shouting at me in my head, pushing me to keep going and stop whining. Even if I don’t whine to other people, if I’m complaining in my own head, that’s not allowed.

While I do enjoy reading and internalizing the positive motivational influences in my life, sometimes I need a good mental asskicking to get things done. Especially if it falls in the category of “important, but not urgent” activities (quadrant 2 activities to those familiar with 7 Habits).

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Whenever there’s something I feel I should do, something I feel will be good for me or others, and I don’t do it because of my fear of failure, I tell myself:

Thishesitation, this inaction, THIS right here—is the difference between why successful people enjoy the success they want and why I don’t have the success I want.

I tell myself, this is why I’m not successful right now, this is why I am not getting the success I want. The people who earned their success just wanted it more badly than I do and that’s why they got it and why I haven’t. 

I bottomline whether I took action or didn’t take action. Like most people, I’ve grown very good at coming up with excuses of why I choose to do something or don’t. I do give myself a break as long as I feel I’m being realistic, but “I had a long day at work” stops being so convincing if I use it several days in a row. 

I tell myself, laziness is a choice, and by choosing laziness I am essentially CHOOSING not to succeed. It feels so natural to just blame everything around me for everything wrong in my life. But in the end, the life is mine to live, and at the end of the day, I am always the one living it. Not doing what it takes to succeed means I consciously choose to not succeed. 

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It is not that I am delusional into thinking success happens overnight. But it’s not hard to think of even small things to do that are steps in the right direction. Doing these small steps regularly eventually snowballs into a habit, and that’s when success happens on autopilot.

This is the kind of mental ass kicking I give myself. The funny thing is my parents don’t pressure me at all to do anything more, they kinda just tell me to relax, enjoy myself, and do my best. Choosing laziness is not my idea of ‘doing my best’.

The reason this works for me is because achieving my own personal success means everything to me. I am just prone to hesitating out of fear of failure, humiliation, and embarrassment, and that is just something I haven’t been able to grow out of yet.

An important distinction is that even in my mental bootcamp, I never call myself a failure. I know I’m not a failure, and I hate that word. No one is a failure. People fail, but that’s not something to define people by. People make mistakes, and failure is proof of having the courage to try. 

I hate the word failure because it says success is no longer an option. And it’s always an option. People choose to succeed or be insignificant.

Just call out your own BS from time to time when you know you’re just fooling yourself. Interrupt yourself when you make excuses for yourself. The people who live out their dreams don’t make excuses about how they just suddenly came true. But everyone will come up with excuses about why their dreams won’t.