There is a vicious cycle so many people put themselves through during the course of their lives. First, they try something new. At the beginning, it’s exciting! Its prospective upside is enough to keep motivation high so that one can potentially achieve a moderate level of success during their trial. Eventually, they hit a wall and things become really difficult. They feel themselves leaving their comfort zone, and suddenly, their motivation dwindles. Distraught and fed up, they find something new looking for their source of motivation to be reignited. This cycle of being close but unable to leave one’s comfort zone is a recipe for mediocrity. This is the “close enough” mindset that plagues people who try new endeavors that will require one to adopt discipline over motivation and break out of their comfort zone rather than be entrapped by it.
Discipline over motivation
These two words may be used in similar contexts, but don’t be fooled! They have very different meanings! Let’s start this section by defining these words so we have a basis of each moving forward.
Motivation – The feeling of joy and excitement one experiences when trying something new or exciting. This feeling is a powerful one, and can lead to accomplishment within one’s comfort zone. However, when boundaries are pushed and things begin to get really difficult, motivation dwindles rather precipitously and eventually fizzles out leading to failure or mediocrity.
Discipline – This is the driving force that gets you out of your comfort zone and into a new stratosphere. Emotion has no place with discipline. Discipline finds a way to get through barriers no matter how difficult things get. It doesn’t care how tired or frustrated you are or how badly you may want to give up. It doesn’t take no for an answer and is the main reason why extraordinary successes are realized.
Having established this basis, it is quite obvious that discipline is the trait required to go from “close enough” to unlimited potential. When attempting anything worthwhile, the universe has a funny way of testing you to see if you’re worthy of achievement. Harnessing the power of discipline to trust that what you’re doing will lead you to where you want to go is vital to crushing your goals. Motivation can be an amazing enhancer like a cup of coffee in the morning. But like you might a few hours after that coffee, you could run completely out of steam. Knowing this about motivation can allow you to harness its finite power to accelerate your progress, but it can never be fully relied upon. Discipline is always the underlying propeller of success, and without it, “close enough” will be a common theme that repeats itself over and over again in your life.
Replicate the process
If you’ve never tread down a path before, how can you be so sure that what you’re doing will lead to the achievement you’re striving for?
That’s a common question you may be rightfully thinking about, and so the answer is quite simple. Study the processes of those who treaded a similar path successfully before you and follow it. Their journey will not be the exact same as yours, but at least you’ll have a direction to follow. As my mentor Pace Morby says in his book, Wealth without Cash: Supercharge Your Real Estate Investing with Subject-to, Seller Financing, and Other Creative Deals, you don’t need to know every step of the journey, just the next step. You learn by doing, not contemplating. You pick up steps as you go and you use the guidance of those who have had success before you on the same path as a roadmap to make sure you’re on the right path. This is the best way to stay on course and make sure you’re taking sizable strides towards your goals.
Your comfort zone is where dreams go to die
To be a high achiever that is continually growing and getting better, you’ll have to get comfortable with leaving your comfort zone regularly. Nothing worth achieving is going to be in your comfort zone initially. You’ll need to take some “risks” and branch out into the world of the unknown. That is where you’ll need to ditch motivation for discipline and put your faith in the process you’re following more so than ever before. Imagine a ladder with your goal being at the top of that ladder. Now imagine there are no rungs in that ladder and each rung is representative of a step you must take to reach that goal. From this example, you can see that the path to achievement is never clear enough to see every step of the process from the beginning. Your job is to find and place one rung at a time. The more rungs you can place in the ladder, the higher you can climb, and eventually your goal will be achieved.
In order to place those rungs in that ladder, you’ll need to leave your comfort zone. Within your comfort zone, everything is clear and mapped out for you. There is an easy path you can take right to mediocrity if you so choose. However, there is the option of the ladder without the rungs that will take you to your highest and most desired goals in life. You can either choose to adopt the discipline to figure out how to put that ladder together, or you can ride out motivation as far as it will take you and repeat that process over and over again.
The choice is yours to make.