Self-Improvement, Psychology
How to Enjoy Doing Hard Things
Condition your mind to success
There’s nothing better than enjoying something which you once considered to be enormously difficult. Albeit exercise, writing, playing an instrument, or reading. After all, living a hedonist life riddled with over-gratification is no life worth living. To quote the great Philosopher Socrates,
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
Living a life of easy-to-get-pleasures may benefit your pleasure in the sort term. But, in the long-term, it will destroy you. That is why we must live a life of discipline.
So then, how exactly do we go about pursuing our dreams and ambitions whilst also liking it at the same time?
n1. Get a good night’s sleep
A prerequisite in enjoying discipline is to first have plentiful rest. Having a good night’s sleep can greatly influence the day to come.
In addition to this, getting enough sleep can help in one’s willpower the next day.
People ought to get at least 7 hours of sleep a night with a preference of 9 hours.
People should also have a schedule of when they go to sleep and when they wake up (for instance — waking up at 6 AM and going to bed at 9 PM) that should never be broken.
n2. Start the day off right
The best way to start the day off is in the absence of phones, computers, or really any internet for that matter.
Instead, people should start the day off in any one (or multitude) of these ways:
- Reading for 15 to 30 minutes
- Reflecting on what you’re grateful for for 10 minutes (make a list — either in your mind or on paper — of 15 things that you’re grateful for)
- Making yourself a healthy breakfast
- Stretching
- Jogging
- A cold shower
- Dream Journal
- Journaling in general
- Meditating
Any number of things can help to build one’s discipline. One of the best, however, is to avoid any distractions in the morning time and instead do something productive.
n3. Habit
You’ve likely heard from self-improvement gurus that motivation and will-power are short-lasting and poor in regard to accomplishing goals. Damon Zahariades, one such self-improvement expert, in his The Mental Toughness Handbook, stated in regard to motivation and willpower,
“We can’t take advantage of [motivation and willpower] on a consistent basis. It’s an unreliable source” (109).
Damon, instead, says that we ought to rely solely on habit rather than mere will-power or motivation. But how do we do this? — The easiest way to achieve habit is by making a plan about what it is you want to achieve — after that write down a rigorous schedule of when you will do things (write things like “at 10 AM I will do xyz). Then write down how much of it you’ll do. For instance, you can say “read 30 minutes”. Lastly, you must commit to doing these things (now that’s the hard part!)
n4. Dopamine Detox
The best way to like doing work, reading, exercise, or any other strenuous activity is to make yourself bored out of your mind before doing whatever it is you seek to accomplish.
And no — this is not strictly intuitive — actual psychiatrists have spoken of this. Dr. Grinspoon, M.D., states,
“Instead of automatically responding to these reward-inducing cues, which provide us with an immediate but short-lived charge, we ought to allow our brains to take breaks and reset from this potentially addictive bombardment.”
I recommend people to quit all forms of addiction. Namely:
- Pornography
- Drugs
- Video Games
- Social Media
- Alcohol
- Smoking Tobacco (and to a lesser degree weed)
- Binge-watching Netflix
Doing this will greatly effect your pleasure in regard to doing hard things.
If you’re bored out of your mind clearly you’re going to enjoy just about anything to consume your time — replace those video games, porn, social media, and/or drugs with productivity, exercise, reading, and indulging in a social life.
n5. Prevent Burnout
Ah — the second most important tip on this list — that is, to prevent burnout. But how exactly does one best go about doing this?
The best way to prevent burnout is to gradually build up to whatever feat you seek to accomplish. If you seek to accomplish writing each and everyday for medium — as I do — then you must attempt to focus on one singular piece for 20 minutes whilst meditating 5 minutes in between and pursuing your work for 10 minutes in a time segment.
Rather than binging your side-hustle, exercise, reading, or really any pursuit you must instead build up to it. Take the example above, hyperfocus on your priority for 10 minutes the first week while meditating for 5 minutes before and 5 minutes after. You can also make use of music to condition your mind. Try and listen to one song to hype you up before exercising, or to get your mind at a state of piece after meditation, or to condition yourself to become prepared for work. You can even listen to various pieces for various different purposes.
n6. Condition your mind with music
For my psychology friends who have heard of Pavlov’s dogs, they should know quite well what classical conditioning is.
Classical conditioning, performed first and observed by Ivan Pavlov, concluded that if you ring a bell and then feed dogs food afterward then something very peculiar happens. If the dog is put in this environment over and over again then the consequence is that the dog will respond to the ringing of the bell by salvitating — even in the absence of the food provided to the dog.
Seeing as listening to music would have no consequence but could provide great benefits people might as well listen to it before, or even during, exercise or work.
What’s the worst that could happen?
