Lately I’ve been pondering why I’m able to be so disciplined and motivated. Since about middle school everyone has always told me that my personality is “extreme” or that my level motivation or discipline to doing an activity I want to do is more intense than their own. After thinking about why that is, I realized that I play a little game in my head when I’m pushing myself, and most people do not seem to play this game. I can’t remember exactly when this game started but I think it started around the time I was 12 when I started playing hockey more intensely and when I got into martial arts intensely for the first time.
If I’m doing an activity like working out that requires discipline to keep going and push myself I will always play a game in my head and talk to myself like this: “ok if I can do 3 more reps then X person I love will be safe for another day and have good luck”. Or I will say that I personally will be safe and have good luck for the day. Additionally sometimes the game goes more morbid and I will say something like “If I don’t do 3 more pullups then X person I love will be injured today”. Think about that for a second, it’s so easy to do 3 more pullups if the consequence is that your best friend or wife or nephew will be injured if you don’t. It’s actually almost trivial to complete the last set of whatever I’m doing at that point.
To me this game seems very common, but I came across a podcast by Joe Rogan today where he explained that he plays a similar game in his mind when doing hard activities. Quoting Joe
“When I workout it’s about rape and murder. My head is filled with scenarios where I’m stopping bad people. Stopping child molesters stopping bad people from doing things. I just fill my head with animalistic rage. That’s what I do when I get tired. When I get tired I think about saving someone I care about. I think about stopping someone who is trying to murder someone I love. That’s what I think about. I think about protecting people I care about. Or I think about someone trying to kill me. Think about the worse case scenario, you are tired and someone is trying to kill someone you care about”.
You have to put yourself in animalistic fury.
Another “cheat” I often do when I’m doing something that requires discipline is I make sure I only have to make the discipline decision one time, or at least as few times as possible. So for example if my goal is to not eat chips I don’t buy chips and put them in the house. That cuts down my need to be “diciplined” to only the times when I’m out at a store and chips are in front of me to purchase. The rest of the time I’m at home and physically can’t eat them, so I don’t need any discipline in those moments. Or another example, If I don’t want to leave dirty dishes around the house I can store all dishes and only leave myself 1 set. Problem solved there are no extra dishes, I have to clean them each time I eat.