When Motivation Ends, Discipline Begins

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic I mostly ran without music.  Quiet attunes you to your body, breathing, pace, and the surrounding environment.  And seemingly half of drivers out there are piloting their death boxes while playing on their cellphones, so it’s crucial to hear everything.

But after a month of pandemic living, I found it harder to find the stoke to run.  All races have been canceled and I often use races for motivation.  The couch is always calling, the never-ending allure of the easy life and sloth.  So I started running with music again to get motivated. 

On a recent run one of my favorite songs came on, “Mistake Pageant” from the Scottish rock band Idlewild.  The song just pumps me up.  Next thing you know I’m running a 7:00 mile pace effortlessly, high on adrenaline.  Ugh.

Why was that bad?  Most of my training runs are between an 8-9 minute mile pace and I didn’t want to be going that hard, it messes up my training. 

The whole thing made me reflect on motivation, and how powerful – and limited – it is.  

 

That Didn’t Last

After my favorite song ended I went back to my normal pace, and it felt hard.  I find it amazing how something as simple as a song can juice a persons body up and put everything on overdrive.  Music is motivation. 

We all see images of athletes entering stadiums in their street clothes with headphones on, getting motivated to do battle with their favorite jams.  Major League Baseball players on most teams can even request what song clip gets played on the stadium PA as they come up to bat to give them that extra kick. 

What’s the problem with this?  The motivation is external, that’s the problem.  Listen to king of all badasses David Goggins explain it in this 1 minute video.

 

Another way of saying it is “That song ain’t gonna help you when you’re getting your ass kicked out on the field. Your headphones won’t save you when you can’t have them.”

As Goggins says, it should be about the internal. 

The internal is where motivation ends, and discipline begins.

 

Tag Team

You can’t really fail at motivation.  You either have it or you don’t.  And when you don’t, you look to something external to get it.  It could be music, a race on the calendar, a bet with a friend. 

How many people try to lose weight for their wedding day only to gain it all back after the big day?  They got the motivation from the wedding, but didn’t transfer it to discipline. 

Discipline is basically the ability to self-motivate.  You can fail at discipline.

Motivation and discipline can work together in a dynamic duo of ass-kicking.  Motivation is the spark to launch a new project, idea, or hobby.  It can get you energized and stoked to conquer new things. 

But that motivation comes from excitement and emotion, and will wither. 

Imagine motivation and discipline as a wrestling team.  When motivation wanes, and it will, that’s when it needs to crawl to the ropes and tag discipline to get in the ring and take over. 

Discipline lays the foundation for the long haul.  Discipline is what makes your new thing a habit, part of who you are and what you do.  And yes, discipline sometimes wanes too and needs relief in the ring. 

I feel I’ve built tremendous discipline in the realm of diet and exercise in my life.  But I’m human, and sometimes weak.  So when my discipline starts to get weak, as it did when I lost the will to run in April, then it tags motivation to come in the ring and pick things up for a while. 

That’s when I started running with music again.  I lost some of my discipline, and used motivation to get it back.

 

Yes This Is Still A Personal Finance Blog

What the hell does this have to do with your money?  It’s really important to know the difference between motivation and discipline to get to financial independence, or to simply start getting your money life in order. 

You may have gone to FINCON before and met a bunch of really successful and awesome personal finance heroes.  It got you all fired up.  Then you came home and started to make changes. 

But a month later you found yourself going back to your old ways, spending too much, not budgeting, not exercising.  That goal of financial independence suddenly appeared like a faint speck of light at the end of a depressingly long tunnel.  

The motivation was external, it came from outside of you.  It faded, as it always does.  It’s still a good thing and useful, but you have to pull that motivation inside and make it an internal driver in your life.  

That’s when it can magically transform to discipline.  That’s when good habits get started that are unbreakable.  It’s the magic step to become what you want to be.

 

Get To It

I have no running or cycling races on my calendar right now, that never happens.  All canceled.  Those external sources of motivation are gone. 

But I’ve survived and arguably thrived during this pandemic and am still in really great shape because I built the discipline. 

I’m not going to lie, it’s been hard at times.  I had to resort to different kinds of external motivation to pick up the slack for my sometimes failing discipline.  But knowing how to use both, and when one needs to pick up the slack for the other, has so far pulled me through.  

They’re a great tag team.