How To Start Any Project Without Discipline And Motivation

How to Start Any Project Without Discipline or Motivation

If I could sell “discipline” and “motivation” as a pill or potion – I’d be a gazillionaire. Everyone wants the good stuff and they want it now.

I can understand this desire. Discipline and motivation make a compelling argument: The more you have the more you’d do what you know you need to do.

With more discipline and motivation you’d exercise more, finish your projects ahead of deadline, get organized, and have no trouble consistently getting yourself to bed at a reasonable hour – just to name a few.

Sounds pretty awesome right? Motivation and discipline have convinced the world that they are the secret antidote to our success and satisfaction.

Except for one thing: They aren’t. Not even in the slightest.

In order to move your projects (and life) forward more consistently – you don’t need more discipline or motivation – you need to see that you already have it. In spades.

Let’s discuss.    

Discipline and motivation are a perception, not a reality.

If the world could watch your day they would see all sorts of routines, habits, and projects that look like they took a lot of discipline and motivation to complete. The same if they looked back over your life. But for you, these activities were just what you needed to do. They looked obvious to you. They didn’t require you to think yourself into a “motivated or disciplined” mentality. You were already there. It is a very ordinary, natural state. This is how you’ve been “doing” discipline and motivation your whole life – by naturally following what occurs to you.

It doesn’t look like discipline and motivation because they come after you’ve seen the obvious thing you need to do.

As a culture, we’ve perpetuated the myth that discipline and motivation must come first.

This isn’t true.

Consider that if you tried on someone else’s habits, routines, or projects for the day – it would take a lot of discipline and motivation to keep them in place – because they aren’t yours. They don’t look obvious to you. What is right for you doesn’t actually take extra thinking to get you “motivated” and “disciplined” but less thinking so you can see more clearly the obvious next step.

So if you don’t need discipline and motivation to start a project – how then do you get started?

Here are 3 quick tips to get you moving in the right direction:

1.    There is no “right” place to start. We exhaust so much mental energy looking for how to start or where to start and that clarity can only come from actually starting. It doesn’t come beforehand. Start and see where it takes you.
2.    You don’t need the whole plan upfront. Look for the very next step. This will lead you to the next step and the next. Sometimes one of these steps is to make a longer-term plan – sometimes it is not. Look for what occurs to you.
3.    Look for the obvious. As we step back from trying so hard to be “disciplined” and “motivated” we drop more readily into the natural flow of life. It occurs to us what project to start, and how to move that forward – we feel a natural (not forced) source of motivation and discipline. This comes from listening to what is obvious – beyond all the chatter in our heads.

Bonus: Catch-on To Yourself: We’ve innocently convinced ourselves that we need motivation and discipline to get things done – this is one of the sneakiest ways to prevent doing so. To procrastinate further. Drop this self-imposed requirement and see what is possible from there.

Moving Forward

Notice how you are already doing this in so many areas of your life – just not the ones you think about most!

If you are feeling stuck and frustrated and would love to move life forward by leveraging your natural strengths and resources – I’d highly recommend that we set up a call to connect. Get started today.