How I tricked my brain to like doing hard things

So for the majority of my life, I struggled to go to the gym consistently. Even though the gym has always been a part of my life to some degree, I grew up playing hockey, and all my brothers played hockey and went to the gym. So going to the gym was always the right thing to do. But I can never stay consistent. Even into university, sometimes I would go two weeks straight at the gym and then take a month off. I'd try to get into a groove and hype myself up. I really wanted to look like Thor, and then I lost my hair.

The whole point of this story is to let you know that if you relate to this, I've been in that exact same place. But I've managed, in recent years, to develop a tremendous consistency at the gym. It takes me a lot less effort to get there than it previously ever has. I can credit this a lot to a particular mindset I've adopted when it comes to doing things that I find difficult or boring. I'm sort of tricking my brain into liking these things. I've also been able to apply this strategy to other areas of my life, most specifically to reading books and editing videos.

Essentially, what I did is I stopped generating motivation by thinking about an end goal. Instead, I learned to enjoy the process. So first of all, what's wrong with visualizing an end goal? Why not use this image of this beach body or Greek god physique as motivation to work out? Well, the main problem you'll face is the fact that there is a huge disparity between what it feels like to fantasize about this Greek god physique and what it feels like to actually be at the gym pushing heavy weights.

They're a completely different sensation. Fantasizing about having an awesome body feels awesome. It puts you in this sort of la-la land where you're just walking around as this imaginary version of yourself. Actually going to the gym? It's strenuous, it's sweaty, and it's often really boring, especially if you're doing cardio on a treadmill. It's like the most boring thing I've ever encountered in my life.

That's the first problem. The second problem that you face when you try to generate your motivation from this ideal image of yourself is that it will always be a moving target. No matter how much you fantasize about this perfect version of yourself, you will never feel like you have arrived. And even if you were to hypothetically arrive at this goal, there's something called entropy: stagnation breeds destruction. If you just sit on your winnings, everything will fall apart. You need to keep moving.

You have to love the daily discipline of going to battle every single day and finding pleasure and fulfillment in the thing in the present moment, for its own sake. If you're able to do this, then that's the happy place. The thing itself will generate its own motivation as you do it, and you can become fully immersed in the activity you're doing.

So am I saying it's bad to have goals in general? Not at all. Goals are really good for creating direction. Having an ideal is sort of like having a compass; it's leading you in the right direction. You should take a glance at it for reference, but in the day-to-day struggle of actually doing the thing, it's not what you should be focusing on.

So now that we know why it's kind of unhelpful to always think about this end goal, now you're probably thinking, "How do I learn to enjoy and embrace difficult things and have it be an integrated part of my life?" So there are two things that really help me do that.

Number one is more of a mindset shift—it's more inner work. Number two is more of a practical, strategic thing that you do to yourself. Okay, so number one is to operate from an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset. When you think to yourself, "I need to go get jacked," do you think that's an abundance mindset or a scarcity mindset? That is a scarcity mindset because you need to go get something, and that implies that you don't already have it.

When you say, "I need to go to the gym because I need to go get jacked," you're subconsciously saying to yourself, "That's because I'm not jacked yet," which also implies to yourself that you're not jacked. As I've mentioned in previous videos, human beings have an innate sense of wanting to stay intellectually consistent. Whatever you think your identity is, you will operate accordingly.

So if you are constantly telling yourself that you are not jacked, what do non-jacked people do? They don't go to the gym. When you look at it that way, going to the gym will always be something that's outside of yourself. It's something that's unnatural for you. Why would you go to the gym if you're not jacked?

So am I saying you should do some like woo-woo thing and pretend that you're jacked all of a sudden? Like, force yourself to know that you are in fact a giant beast? That's not what I'm saying because that's not true. Instead, try reminding yourself that the reason why you want to go to the gym is because you're an active person, and going to the gym is something that is important to you. Your health is important to you.

So since you're an active person, going to the gym is just something you do. That gets rid of a ton of mental resistance in the way of actually going to the gym. You can use this exact same method for reading books. If you're constantly telling yourself, "Oh, I have to go read books to get smarter," "Oh, I have to go read a book now," obviously you're not gonna have a good time while you're doing it.

But if you identify as somebody who enjoys reading books, it's something that you like doing; it's just a part of who you are. Then you're way more likely to actually follow through with doing it. And if you think this is just some woo-woo crap, this is how some of the greatest musicians, athletes, and performers operate. Take John Mayer for example.

I was just watching one of his Instagram live videos where he was jamming out to blues backtracks, and he was having the time of his life. He said on the actual live stream, "Nothing's more fun in this lifetime than going out to dinner and coming home and picking up the guitar and just practicing—just playing." "I don't even call it practice because even the word practice implies that you're only doing it to achieve some sort of outcome. But if you're playing, you're just enjoying it for what it is. So when I'm playing free, I'm like... and I'm kind of doing what I do at home, which is repeat the same stuff over and over again because it feels really good."

This next tip is a little bit more practical and a little less theoretical, and that is to utilize habit bunching. That is when you pair an already existing habit that you are used to doing with one that you're trying to work on. So, for instance, I'm a sucker for a great cup of coffee. I have one in the morning and one in the early afternoon. I really enjoy the taste of coffee, and I look forward to it every single time. Do I have an addiction? Yes. But I can leverage this filthy habit of mine into working on another habit.

A great one to pair with a coffee addiction is reading, and that's exactly how I started reading more books. Every single morning, next to my coffee maker, I placed the book that I wanted to read next to it so that when I made my coffee, I knew to pick up the book. I could only drink the coffee if I was reading the book the entire time I was drinking it. Done. And the thing about this is eventually you just start getting used to reading whether you have coffee or not.

The action of opening up a book and reading becomes a lot more natural. It'll become something very pleasant to you. That's so much better than reading for the end goal of becoming smarter. Like, what does getting smarter even feel like? It doesn't feel like anything. It's not like in The Matrix where they download kung-fu onto Neo; all of a sudden you just feel it.

Habit bunching also works really well when you're trying to develop a gym habit. If you have an album that you are currently in the habit of listening to, and you crave the sound of Post Malone's beautiful, sweet, silky melodies, then you should leverage that. Allow yourself to listen to Post Malone, but only when you're at the gym. This is one of the main ways I started to become consistent at the gym.

I had this Migos album that would pump me up so much; even though looking back on it now, it's like not even good music at all. And just like drinking coffee and reading, once you start using habit bunching to develop a positive association with the habit you're trying to work on, then your entire mindset towards that thing shifts.

Pretty soon, you will just like going to the gym because of the way it makes you feel and realize that it's less about the music that's actually making you feel so good, and it's more about the endorphins of pushing heavy weight and getting stronger.

So to summarize, stop generating your motivation on a day-to-day basis by fantasizing about some sort of end goal that you're never going to arrive at. Instead, use the appropriate mindset shifts and the habit bunching tool, and whatever other tools at your disposal you have to help you love the process and help you love doing these things for their own sake.

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