A Short Lesson on Burnout and Consistency
Going through the motions.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been feeling a bit burnt out.
I’ve been on the road every single weekend since August, and there is more travel to come.
It’s a blessing to travel this much and do work that I love, but it’s also hard.
Even harder is to travel this much, stay consistent in my training, not eat terribly, and stay focused on my bigger goals.
Showing up to Jiu-Jitsu training every day is not so easy.
Sitting down at the computer every day to work is not so easy.
Very often, I find myself searching for a way out of doing what needs to be done.
I don’t really want to sit down and write. If I am in a period where I’m traveling a lot, for example, the mere thought of it is draining and exhausting. Doing extra work on hardly any recovery seems like a recipe for disaster.
It’s the same way the idea of going to the gym when you’re overweight seems daunting and exhausting.
It’s the same reason why going to a Jiu-Jitsu class when you are timid is daunting.
Things that you do not usually do are very difficult to do every single day.
Writing every day is hard. Honestly, sometimes I want to write, and the thing that is killing me is that I have to write content for my newsletters and my business. At times, I want to quit all this writing and write a novel or a movie or something else that I’ve never done before.
But my work? It’d be easier just to get AI to do it.
Oftentimes, I would rather just sit on the couch and eat Twinkies than do the work to push me forward to where I want to be.
But there’s a funny little thing that you learn when you start fighting back against the resistance that your own mind creates for you:
The more you move, the easier it gets.
When you start writing every day, it gets easier to write. You start to create little tricks that make writing easier. The words may never come easily, but they start to come easier.
In the beginning, you’re just going through the motions. Putting one foot in front of the other. Going step by step.
When you go step by step long enough, you will eventually turn back around and realize how far you have come.
And that’s the most important lesson there is on consistency.
When the road feels long, zoom out. One step at a time.
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