Author: Steve Bloom

“There is no failure except in no longer trying.” – Elbert Hubbard

I’ve accomplished many big goals over the past few years.

Live overseas?  Did it.

Graduate with a master’s degree?  I crossed that off recently too.

When I set my mind to a goal, I put in a lot of time and effort to finish it.  Even if goals take a lot of hard work, I know that with patience and perseverance, I can achieve them.

But still, I would be lying if I said I never consider giving up.

That goes for everything I’ve done.  There hasn’t been any big goal that I’ve set out to accomplish that I never felt like walking away from.

Whenever I set out on a big goal, I know that I’ll eventually get that gnawing voice in my head saying things like:

“You’re not good enough to do this.”

“It won’t work out the way you planned.”

These negative thoughts eat at the back of my mind like parasites.  Whether from fear or self-doubt, they pop up to derail my plans.

But I don’t let them.

I know that these thoughts are a normal part of the process.  They’re just another obstacle you have to overcome to get where you want to go.  And if you know how to handle them properly, they’ll never hold you back.

Whenever I feel like giving up, I first ask myself one simple question:

Is this goal something I still want or has something changed?

Perhaps you feel like giving up simply because you no longer want what you’re working towards.

Maybe you feel like giving up because your priorities have changed.  It’s possible to set out on a goal, but change over time.  Perhaps you’re at a stage in life where you no longer find this goal important to accomplish.

If that’s the case, your feelings are there because you no longer value the end goal.  In which case, you shouldn’t feel bad about quitting.  There’s no point in chasing something you don’t truly want.

If You Still Want the Goal

If you still want to keep going, but you’re feeling like giving up, it means that you need to reconnect with what you’re pursuing.

When you’re working hard to reach something, your motivation and inspiration for doing it can get lost among the daily effort.  We start to focus too much on what we need to do and less on why we need to do it.

Here are four ways to get back on track:

1. Revisit your motivation

Remind yourself why you wanted to pursue it.  What was the reason you started out?

Think back to what inspired you.  Was it a book, a person or a story?

Take some time to reconnect with that inspiration.

Reconnect with everything that made you excited about it.  Most of the time, what’s missing is that spark – the electric excitement of what’s possible.

There’s a purpose behind your actions and you just need to re-discover what it was.  If you can remind yourself what made you begin in the first place, you can give yourself a boost to keep going now.

2. Focus less on the end and more on how far you’ve come

Sometimes we focus so much on the end goal, that we forget to realize just how far we’ve actually gone.  If all you see is how far you still need to go, you’ll only discourage yourself and become frustrated.

Instead, take a moment to see where you’ve been.  How much have you done to get to the point you’re at?

Think of all the hard work you’ve done.  Think of all the progress you’ve made and how much you’ve actually done.  You’ve done a lot more than you’re giving yourself credit.

When you take a moment to shift your focus from the end to the beginning, you’ll really start to feel good about what you’ve accomplished rather than bad about what you still have ahead of you.

3. Talk to someone

Feeling like giving up can be an emotional experience.  When you get that feeling, your mind is filled with emotions like fear, doubt, worry and frustration.  It can be a difficult time.

Sometimes you just need an outlet.  Just having someone to share your thoughts with can get some of those thoughts out of your head.

Feelings can carry a weight to them.  When you bottle them up in your head they just weigh you down.  Talking them through with another person can help you release that weight off your mind.

Plus, it’s good to have someone who can put things into perspective.  They’ll remind you why you want this goal and everything you’ve already done to achieve it.

Having someone to cheer you up at the right moment can help you get out of your slump and back on track.

4. Fall in love with your challenges

Big goals take time and effort.  You can’t expect things to fall into place right away.

I’ve learned that big accomplishments rarely work as a straight line from a to b.  It’s a zigzagged course taking you all over the alphabet from a to z.

You’ll face unexpected challenges.  You’ll face difficulties you never anticipated.  It’s never as straightforward as we like and that can be frustrating.

But rather than letting it bring you down, see the positives of the situation rather than the negatives.  The problem can be that you’re seeing your challenges in a negative light.

Don’t see them as negative things you’re forced to overcome.  See them as puzzles to solve.

Think back to a time when you were challenged.  It can be a time at work or school when you were faced with a problem and you overcame it.  Remind yourself how good it felt when you finally solved it.

Your challenges can be solved too.  When you remind yourself of that good feeling you had when you finally solved it, you can give you the motivation to recapture it.
photo credit: Jason Parks

If you want to learn a foreign language, you need to spend hours memorizing vocabulary and grammar.

To get into great shape, you need to perform repetitive exercises on a regular basis.

I’ve written about the importance of doing boring things before, but that lesson was highlighted to me a few weeks ago at the symphony.

As I was reading about the lead violinist, I found something interesting. Apparently, she still starts every morning playing the same scales she did as a beginner.

An extremely talented and advanced violinist starts out every day doing the same basic scales she did as a youngster. She says that they’re essential to maintaining her ability.

The big lesson in all of this is that boring tasks pay off. It’s just doing them that’s hard – after all, they’re boring.

Learning a foreign language is exciting. You get to speak to others in a brand new way; it’s impressive. But hardly anyone gets excited about learning the vocabulary.

Writing a novel is a big goal for many people. That excitement dies down when confronted with the day-to-day writing tasks that go into it.

But what if you could become passionate about boring tasks? If you can get excited to do them, you could unlock a lot of potential and accomplish more. But how do you do it?

The Power of Ritual

The first step to becoming passionate about a boring task is to create a ritual around it. Embedding them into a set sequence of activities will make it easier to integrate the task into your life.

According to Twyla Tharp in her book, The Creative Habit, she uses a morning ritual to help her exercise daily. Each morning activity leads seamlessly into the other until finally she ends up in a taxi cab going to the gym to work out.

She credits her daily workouts to this ritual. Otherwise she would never find the motivation to go. In fact, she quite dislikes working out, but the ritual activities flow so well that it sweeps her along to her goal.

Stephen King also has a ritual to his writing. Each morning, when he wakes up, he brews a cup of tea and takes a vitamin. Promptly starting between 8AM and 8:30AM, King sits in the same chair behind the same desk with all his papers arranged exactly the way he wants.

Once again, he credits his prolific writing with this ritual. As he has said, when he sits down at that desk, his mind knows it’s time to write.

I’ve had similar results. I used to write at various times and places with decent output. However, when I created a workspace and set a time-frame dedicated specifically to writing, my word count steadily increased.

Daily rituals are consistently found among a lot of highly accomplished people. If you want to read more about them go to this list of 25 famous thinkers and their inspiring daily rituals.

Find the Intrinsic Value of the Task

Turning the boring task into a ritual is only the first step. Rituals will make you consistent, but if you want to become passionate about the boring task, you need to do more.

There has to be something about the task that gets you excited. You have to find something that keeps you going and wanting to do more.

Passion will come when you find intrinsic value in the boring task you’re doing.

For example, when I was studying French, I memorized a lot of vocabulary words using flash cards. It’s hard to become passionate about rote memorization of vocabulary words, but it happened to me. In the end, it was one of my greatest joys.

Each day I would go through an old set of words and try to recall the translation. Each time I successfully recalled a word felt great. The more I recalled, the more I felt like I was building something.

Later, when I tested my translation skills with a French movie or TV show, I would pay close attention to any vocabulary words I had memorized. If I heard one and understood it, I felt the hard hard work was paying off.

That’s really the secret to being passionate about boring tasks. You have to feel like it’s building up to something or paying off in the end. You have to find purpose in them.

As I studied French, I could tell I was understanding more and more. Memorization wasn’t for nothing; I was building up the French language more than I could have hoped and that was exciting.

It’s the same for writing a book. I do a little here and there every day. It’s exciting to see the words coming together as the book forms.

People only dread boring tasks when they don’t see any reason or purpose to them. If you can see your daily tasks building up to something, it’s a lot easier to get passionate about them.
photo credit: Emily’s Mind