|
|
The best way to build long-term resolve is to develop a long-term passion that consistently motivates you to persist in spite of challenges. When performed over the long term, it will build up your reserves of mental strength while you’re enjoying yourself.
Being able to draw parallels between this activity and your other goals will prove to be one of the greatest assets you’ll be able to access to keep going. Think of it as an exercise in building a thicker skin and gaining valuable experiences that you can leverage when you face adversity while working on other goals.
I could easily draw numerous parallels between rock climbing and goal achievement — and I frequently do, to help me achieve my goals. Such an all-encompassing approach to developing determination will deliver the best results. You’ll learn from your own experience instead of learning from a book, and all of that will happen as a side effect of your passion.
After facing so many stressful and uncomfortable situations on a cliff or on an indoor climbing wall, I’m now better equipped to find strength to keep going when faced with other negative circumstances. I can recall a difficult situation when climbing and translate it to the situation I’m facing right now — and remind myself that I can push through it.
In climbing, you often try the same route over and over again for weeks or months, always falling at the same difficult point. Then, eventually one day you succeed and progress further. Mere words can’t describe the elation you have when you realize that your determination has finally paid off — and the best part is that this experience helps you apply the same level of dedication to other parts of your life, too.
Sometimes you climb a route that is within your abilities, but your negative self-talk prevents you from climbing it successfully. Oftentimes, it’s not about your physical performance, but your mental attitude. I once spent 20 minutes hanging on a cliff, repeatedly trying and falling on the same move, over and over again. Despite telling myself numerous times that there was no way I would be able to perform it, I finally succeeded and realized that I had been limiting my performance myself with my useless negative talk.
Such experiences build new neural pathways that transform you into a new person. In my case, climbing turned me into a more determined person. I now know — and experienced it firsthand over and over again — that with enough attempts, and despite self-doubt, I can reach my goals.
I can’t overstate the importance of having such experiences yourself. It’s one thing to read about them in a book; it’s a completely different thing when you experience them yourself and draw your own conclusions. Don’t just gloss over these paragraphs. This is one of the most important lessons I can share with you when it comes to building a successful life. You need to learn through your own experiences.
EXERCISE #13: DEVOTE YOURSELF
Find an activity that you can be passionate about over the long term. It needs to put you in situations in which you can grow your mental toughness. Ideas include: all kinds of sports, public speaking, standup comedy, dancing, yoga, traveling. Ideally, your passion should require you to step outside your comfort zone on a regular basis, although writing, programming, cooking or artistic skills such as illustration, painting or photography can also serve as valuable teachers.
Here are some pointers to help you find the right activity for you:
1. You can easily engage in it on a regular basis. For example, surfing would not be a good choice if it takes you five hours to reach the coast.
2. It’s something that engages you physically and mentally so that you can experience the state of flow, a state of being fully immersed in the activity.
3. You must be able to learn life lessons from this activity and apply them to other activities.
4. You must believe that if you persist at it, you will get better at it. You won’t stick to anything in the long term if you doubt your abilities to improve.
5. Tony Robbins defines addiction as a behavior (negative or positive) that meets at least three of six human needs: certainty, variety, significance, connection/love, growth and contribution. Your activity must also meet three of those same needs. For example, if something you do makes you feel safe (meets the need for certainty), important (meets the need for significance) and loved (meets the need for connection/love), you’ll engage in it on a regular, permanent basis.
It’s important to note that you probably won’t like this activity all the time. For example, as much as I love rock climbing, whenever I climb a hard route, I often feel like I want to stop and be safe and sound back on the ground. However, the moment I’m back on the ground — or haven’t been climbing for a couple of days — I feel the need to do it again. That’s a great example of something I’m devoted to, even though it’s often so challenging I want to stop.
Reading books won’t be a good candidate for this particular use because it isn’t super challenging (unless you want to read the world’s most boring book), and neither will watching TV series. You must see this activity as a vehicle for rapid and significant personal growth.
If you already have such an activity in your life, good for you! Think of at least five difficult situations you faced when performing this activity and how you overcame them. Even something as mundane as hitting the golf ball in a completely wrong direction, but then still winning the game thanks to persistence, can become a great metaphor to help you reach other goals.
In addition to learning valuable lessons you can apply to other goals, a long-term passion teaches you good old work ethics and determination.
Nowadays, few people are able to dedicate themselves to something over the long term. Commitments and promises are no longer seen as sacrosanct. People love the rush of trying one new thing after another without ever becoming well-familiarized with something.
When you devote yourself to a certain activity and it becomes a long-term passion, you’ll stick to it no matter what happens. It will be too hard to break the habit just because you no longer feel like doing it. Such a devotion to a passion is a powerful master strategy to encourage positive mindset changes, build grit, and grow you as a person. I consider it a must-have for people who want to achieve their full potential.
EMPOWERING STORY #9: ELLIE ROBINSON
Ellie Robinson was born with a form of dwarfism that impairs movement. Despite her condition, she started swimming at the age of four. In 2012, when she was 11, her parents took her to the 2012 London Paralympics to watch Ellie Simmonds, the four-time gold medalist in swimming who suffers from the same condition.
Inspired by Simmonds, Ellie decided to start competing. Unfortunately, due to another condition of hers (Perthes’ disease, which disrupts blood flow to the hip and causes immense pain), she had to stop training for six months. Belinda Smith, her first coach at Northampton Swimming Club said about Ellie’s resolve, “Even when she came back in about June 2013, she couldn’t dive, she couldn’t turn and she had to be helped into the water.”[46]
In spite of her condition and a forced training break, she made quick progress and qualified for a spot on Great Britain’s Paralympics team in Rio de Janeiro 2016 — with a time better than her idol Ellie Simmonds in the 50m butterfly. At the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, she won the gold medal and set a new record time in the women’s S6 50m butterfly.
Despite requiring daily physiotherapy, she trains five days a week for a total of 15 hours and is in the pool at 5 a.m. on two mornings a week.
When asked about her personal statement, she said: “One of the main quotes I like to remind myself is ‘don’t let your fear of what could happen make nothing happen,’ so I can make the most of my opportunities.”[47]
1. Developing a passion that forces you to step outside your comfort zone and/or delivers other lessons that you can apply when working on other goals is a powerful master strategy for becoming a successful person. It’s one thing to read about someone’s experiences and quite another to draw parallels between your own experiences; nothing can replace the latter in its effectiveness and applicability to your own situation.
2. When you devote yourself to a passion over the long term, you’ll also learn how to be more determined and maintain a strong work ethic — two traits many people sorely lack in today’s world of instant gratification.
