If it is not difficult, then you should not take it.

According to psychological studies, the emotions from the expectation of an event almost always exceed the experience of the event itself.

Fear of asking the boss a salary increase paralyzes and can last for months. But when you do plan to do it, everything will end very quickly. An excited expectation of owning an object or achieving a goal can turn into a mania. But soon after you get what you want, you get bored and you start looking for something else. “We buy things to make us happier, and we succeed. But not for long. New things make us happy first, and then we adapt to them, ”says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell University.
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It is interesting that your mind can deceive you and make the idea of ​​something more pleasant than the subject itself, so that you enjoy the idea itself and do not make it happen. In his new book, Ego is the Enemy, [Ego is the Enemy], Ryan Holiday explains that the main obstacle to success is the idea of ​​success.

Dreaming is very easy. Easy to tell people about their aspirations. Easily create a visual wish board and record goals. It is easy to stand in front of a mirror and declare intentions. And usually everyone stops at this.

The very process of dreaming prevents you from reaching your goal. You have lost your dream in your head with such details that this is enough for you. You are cooling and deceiving yourself by believing that you have done something productive.

As a result, trying directly the action itself, you stumble upon a wall of resistance. More often than not, you distract yourself from this discomfort with some momentary pleasure. Robert Green explains in his book “Mastery” [Mastery] that one can learn to love this inner resistance. He writes: "You find some perverse pleasure in moving through the pain it can bring."

How to get out of your rut

In his book “Living with a Marine” [Living with a SEAL] Jesse Itzler [Jesse Itzler] tells how he was inspired by one Marine, in connection with which the author invited him to live in his house for a month. Itzler admitted that he fell into a rut and wanted to shake off his routine.

On the first day, the Marine asked Itzler: "How many times have you pulled up?" Itzler barely pulled eight times. “Rest for 30 seconds and repeat,” said the Marine. After 30 seconds, Itzler hung on the bar and made six pull-ups. “Rest for 30 seconds and repeat again,” said the Marine. After 30 seconds, Itzler pulled himself up three times, as a result of which he was completely exhausted.

"We will not leave until you do 100 pull-ups," said the Marine. Itzler was surprised. "Well, but we will spend a lot of time here - I can not catch up 100 times." Nevertheless, Itzler still pulled himself 100 times, once for an approach. The Marine convinced Itzler that he could do more than he thought.

The Marine principle is called the “40% rule” - people feel exhausted both physically and mentally and stop when they have spent only 40% of their strength. The discomfort comes when you go beyond the 40%. Hence the Morpheus mantra: "If it is not difficult, it means you should not take it."

The power of the objective achievement of the goal

This pain is a challenge on the side of consciousness - will you learn to focus and overcome boredom, or, like a child, will give in to the need to immediately receive pleasure and distraction?

- Robert Green

Like Itzler, who destroyed the mental barrier, having made 100 pull-ups, you too can get out of your rut, achieving tangible goals. The concept is: do something and do not stop until you finish, no matter how long it takes.

Your goal is to learn how to achieve complex goals without any distractions. You need to develop perverted pleasure, in Green's terms, experiencing internal conflict and getting along with it.

This concept is included in the crossfit. Unlike most people who grab smartphones between exercises, you have a specific goal in a crossfit and you kill before you reach it.

If it is not difficult, then you should not take it.

This principle can be extended to anything. You can do homework until you finish. You can write an article until you publish. You can do 100 pushups, run 5 kilometers until you do. What does it matter how long it takes?

Greatest opportunity in history

In Delving into Work: Rules for Concentrated Success in the Distraction World [Deep Work: Distracted World], Cal Cal Newport states:

“The ability to go deeper into work is becoming an increasingly rare quality, and at the same time, it is becoming an increasingly valuable quality for our economy. As a result, the few who practice this skill and make it the basis of their work are flourishing. ”

Without a doubt, we live in the most distracting time in the history of mankind. It is almost impossible to concentrate on one task for more than a few minutes in a row. Here the law of opposites plays. For every action there is an equal resistance. While most of the world is increasingly distracted, a handful of the elect earns it.

As economist Tyler Cowan [Tyler Cowan] said: "There are no averages anymore." The middle class has disappeared - either you are among the prosperous, or you, like most, are distracted, overeat, and live in poverty.

Choose for yourself.

If something becomes unpleasant to you, do you give up? Or do you overcome it and as a result enjoy the satisfaction of growth and success?

Everything worth doing is initially unpleasant. All that is worth doing is to go through pain and sacrifice. This is the problem of America, which was built on the morality of control impulses. Once it was a country of people who sacrificed momentary pleasures for a better future, and now the main message is to live a moment.

This is what people do. Live moment. As a result, if something becomes unpleasant or difficult, most immediately give up. Most are immersed in momentary satisfaction at the expense of a better future.

Worse, the second “truth” of today's culture is to love yourself the way you are. The self-esteem movement that began at the end of the twentieth century has made a major contribution to preventing success.

People are taught to love themselves regardless of their success. They justify mediocrity. At the same time, Asians and other migrants, who are often considered people with low self-esteem, constantly beat Americans with high.

In other parts of the world, hard work is a virtue, and in America it is now fashionable to say: “Don't work too hard!”. Today's success is to get as much as possible by doing as little as possible.

In the book “The Triple Package: how three unlikely traits explain the rise and fall of cultural groups in America” [The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain], Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld [ Jed Rubenfeld] explains that the most successful people not only control impulses, but also have an inherent sense of inferiority.

They may have conviction, but they are not self-confident. They always feel not good enough compared to others, so they constantly push themselves, regardless of their success, to prove something to themselves. They are never satisfied with the results of their actions and continue to feel inferior.

Junk.

Real confidence can only be deserved. It comes with success, not with the desire for success.

True confidence comes when you constantly overcome unpleasant things. The longer you get along with boredom, pain and discomfort - and then you create something meaningful, the more you are confident and successful.

So Ryan Holiday [Ryan Holiday] explains in an interview with Lewis Howes: you get a reward for the work done, not for the promises made.

Work hard. Coming to outstanding physical shape is cruel. Building deep and committed relationships is almost impossible. Most marriages end in divorce. Spiritual growing up requires you to abandon who you want to be in favor of who you are.

All these things are unpleasant to do, at least first. But if something is not unpleasant, there is no point in doing it. And you can learn to withstand the discomfort of the current moment for building a decent life.

If you are stuck in a rut, like Itzler, give yourself specific challenges - no matter how long it takes to complete them.

Pleasure and happiness

“A life in which there are no hard-won achievements and no obstacles to overcome cannot satisfy. There is something satisfying and even exciting in the quality performance of something complex. There is joy and pride in overcoming oneself and moving to the next level or overcoming another milestone. A life dedicated to the current moment - to feel good now - is unlikely to bring real pleasure. The current moment is too small and empty. Everyone needs a future. Something future, something more than current satisfaction, so that there is something to strive for and so that we can feel that we are doing something. ”

- Triple pack

Real happiness — joy — is different from momentary pleasure. Not that momentary pleasure is inherently bad. But often it serves as an obstacle to something more real and long lasting.

Everything worth doing brings with it satisfaction that is inaccessible to distractions. Do not give in to resistance. Overcome difficulties. That is how you will comprehend the joy, inaccessible to those who give up.

Says geologist James Talmage [James Talmage]:

“Happiness has no bad aftertaste, it is not followed by depression; it brings no regrets and disappointments. Real happiness can be experienced again and again in memory, and always with good feeling; instant pleasure can leave a wound, as a constant source of suffering. ”

Have an incredible day!