Hi meaningful leader,
Happy Tuesday! I hope your week is going well and your weekend was fun and restful…mine was awesome, thanks for asking!
As I’m in the process of writing my first book, I wanted to share some wisdom I’m learning regarding self-discipline vs. motivation. No matter what our goal is, action will get us started and motivation will follow, but motivation alone will never drive us to the finish line.
Successful leaders are creatures of habit and understand that action ALWAYS comes before motivation. In the words of Aristotle, “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit“
Motivation fluctuates. It is definitely not a given, and it can be easily tampered with, by the circumstances surrounding us. Motivation is not reliable and leaders and teams that attempt to consistently base off their efforts on motivation alone, will surely fail.
On the other hand, a team who feels inspired by a growth-oriented leader, has bypassed the need for motivation and has built process-oriented, actionable habits that allows the operation to move forward, regardless of what’s going on around them.
One thing I’m learning in the transition from writer to author is that no matter what the project at hand is, we cannot wait for inspiration or motivation to magically arrive at the door and take us by the hand, before we start moving. The fact of the matter is that we have to first start, like in my case writing down thoughts, in order for the good ideas and inspiration to start flowing. That’s how the crappy first draft is born! LOL
“The only thing stopping you from achieving your dreams are the stories you keep telling yourself that you can’t. Don’t wait- act now. Regret nothing.”
Denzel Washington
We tend to romanticize the idea of having all our ducks in a row before getting started, but what happens in this case is that more often than not, procrastination kicks in, and if you tend to be on the perfectionist side, forget it, the wheels will keep on turning, yet nothing of value will truly get accomplished. The doer of deeds is the one getting the work done. Walk the talk, don’t forget that talk is cheap!
Action on the other hand, leads to small results, quick wins. And as those baby steps start to happen, then and only then, we’ll start to feel the fire of our motivation. The small wins start to develop our self-belief.
Don’t get overwhelmed, break that huge goal into smaller milestones, assess your quick wins and get into action. Don’t wait for motivation, the only way to achieve our goals is to act upon them and crush ’em!
Have an awesome week and God bless!
Maria
One Comment
Very nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I’ve really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!