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There is an idea in the world that suggests that if work is hard, then it must be painful work. This is not the case. Your work can actually be very enjoyable if you will make it so with your mindset and planning.

You can change your perspective on world and view it as something valuable to your life. And you can engineer your work life to serve you and align with your goals.

First, we have to address the fact that hard work is overstated and overhyped in the modern world. Work is talked about in one of two extremes at all times. Either there is a hyper-focus on the hustle and maximum effort or there is a concentration on hacks and the easy path. I think as with most things, the middle is the most accurate. There needs to be a balance between massive effortful action and the so-called easy way.

But when it comes to hard work, people have come to the conclusion that hard work must be painful.

This is not the case. It is not the case that every bit of our working days must be unenjoyable or painful. I enjoy almost every day of my work. I believe I still work with a strong focus and with good effort, but I do not constantly run my mouth about “hard work” anymore. I do not talk about grind because it has a painful connotation. I try to resist that because talking about work this way misses the point.

There are times when a strong, sprint-like effort is necessary, but it is meant to be a short burst of energy. Even though many people have boring, soul-sucking jobs, our work was not designed to be that way from the beginning.

You also have to address the fact that hard work needs to be directed in a positive direction if you are going to even bother engaging in it at all.

If you start digging a hole in the ground and work really hard at it, 12 hours a day, what will you have at the end? That is right, just a hole in the ground. Unless having a hole in the ground was your goal, I would say that was a poor use of so-called hard work. So before you peel off into a sprint of massive effort, make sure you are actually taking action in the direction of your goals instead of in some other random, pointless direction in life.

When it comes to hard work, stop listening to people who yell about hard work.

Some people talk about work ethic and hard work and they do so with a calm, collected presence. If they need to scream and be all hardcore on you, they miss the point. On the other hand, sometimes that stuff is valuable and fires us up; but many times those people end up being simply annoying to the rest of humanity around them. They could motivate so many more people if they adjusted their delivery. Not their message, but their delivery. So work hard, give an appropriate effort toward the things you are trying to do, but be quiet about them. Work in silence and your success will speak out loud.

Do not become too obsessed with working hard for long hours until you have identified clearly the direction you actually want to go in your life. Otherwise, you are wasting your time. If you do not set your sail in the right direction, you could end up sailing in completely the wrong direction, the opposite direction from your goals.

Work hard at times, but do not become infatuated with the hustle culture unless the things they have earned are the things you really, truly want.

Sometimes it is necessary to hustle for 80 hours per week, but more often than not, the people who do this have no idea what they want out of life. They do not know why they want success or the material things of this world. Again, there is nothing wrong with earning these things or working towards them. Just make sure they are what you truly want. Not what someone else wants, just you. Make sure your goals are your goals.

Back to the main point, I enjoy every day of my work. Even if I have a long day and am tired at the end, I do not suffer for the whole day. I’m not in pain. I’m generally having a pretty good time and doing my best to maintain a positive mental attitude. I would also say I work with the appropriate amount of effort.

So in life, get rid of the idea that you have to engage in painful work that causes you to suffer for the entire day. You do not have to do that. Make good choices with your freedom. Hard work is not painful work – it is simply the work we were meant to do, and it was meant to be satisfying.

Further reading: Components of motivation.

While there might be something to be said about being a positive influence on others. There is much more to be said about avoiding the power of negative influence. That is what is covered in this video.

Even though it is important for us as men and Christians to be a light to the world and a positive influence, there is much more at stake than simple influence. We place ourselves at risk of being negatively influenced by others when we try to influence them. In this way, influence is a double-edged sword.

We need to consider this so we can make the best decisions for ourselves. We have to try to influence people for good but protect ourselves at the same time. You have to protect yourself first and foremost.

This power of influence is one of the many reasons God placed such restrictions on immigration into Israel in the Old Testament. Because God understood the power of a negative influence. He knew that the way influence works is by an overwhelming absorption of new people into the system.

We need to consider this in our own lives as well. We need to carefully watch who it is that we let into our lives at any life point. If we are not careful we can find ourselves under the power of a negative influence.

Manage your friends. Be highly selective about who you spend your time with. You need to modulate negative influences and maximize positive influences. If you are trying to influence other people, you need to ensure you have enough allies to influence them Influence only works if multiple people work to do the influencing.

Work hard to avoid exposing yourself to various negative influences in your life. If you can minimize this, you remain much more in charge of your life. You remain the captain of your destiny.

If you could only choose between avoiding negative influence and being a positive influence, you would be better off if you avoid negative influence.

Learn to improve your focus in life.

Let your eyes look directly ahead
And let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you.

Proverbs 4:25

People tend to mindlessly talk about hard work without talking about the equally important concept of leverage. Leverage is making sure your actions get the most “bang for their buck”. 

Today, men boast about turning a bolt by grasping the center of a wrench, or close to the bolt. Instead, they should grasp the edge of the wrench, where the force they apply is amplified by the leverage. Then they can boast about the results of high-leverage activity. 

That does not mean we never use focused, concentrated effort (which is the term I prefer to use instead of “hard work”). But rather that we use this concentrated effort with the actions that also have the most leverage. If I use a wrench and grip it to give myself the most leverage, I reduce the amount of effort necessary to turn it. But I can still use more effort if I want and turn the bolt faster. 

In the world, there are also high-leverage activities. In the gym, there are some types of training that have better leverage than others if you are looking for specific results. 

Your leverage in day-to-day activities is the tool of focus. You can improve focus if you want. If you can learn to focus, you can improve any part of yourself that you want. But you must be able to hold your attention on something for a period of time. 

Here are four steps to focus.

I – You must believe that you can learn to focus.

You must have a growth mentality. As cheesy as it sounds, you are not going to make much progress if you do not believe that you can change. Some people believe that what they can do or who they are is fixed, and they can’t do anything to change it despite their greatest effort. But the reality is that most people can make improvements to themselves in any area. Even if the improvements are small, these are still improvements. 

This is why you must begin to believe that you can learn to focus. Stop labeling yourself ADHD.  Even if you are, you’re doing yourself no favors by labeling yourself in This Way. Label yourself as “focused” and “disciplined”. Start to believe that you can become anything you want, including an Incredibly focused individual. 

II –  You must believe that Focus creates Focus.

Discipline begets discipline. You need to rid yourself of the limiting belief that focusing on tasks drains you of the ability to focus. Just like when you are training your physical body in the gym, you exert physical effort but somehow you managed to come out of the gym with more energy. The body may be physically exhausted, but the mind is fresh and full of energy. How did that happen? How do you put energy out into the world in the form of exercise yet somehow find a way to create more energy in your own mind? Perhaps it can’t be understood. But the same principle applies when it comes to focus. 

You must believe that focusing actually builds your ability to focus even more. Many people have believed this throughout the centuries. Different yoga techniques teach you to train your focus by doing Focus exercises. Begin to Believe that exerting energy to build the ability to focus actually results in more Focus down the line. And even scientists are beginning to catch on these days. The science behind fixed-point gazing to improve focus is beginning to develop.

III –  Complete exercises to train your focus.

Start with a fixed Point gazing. Learn to focus on the tip of an eraser, the tip of a pen, or some small point in space. You will find that your ability to focus increases. Mental focus follows visual Focus, as discussed by Dr. Andrew Huberman. begin with 60 seconds to 2 minutes of fixed-point gazing.  

IV Increase your ability to focus by using Blocked linear progression.

This is a fancy term for simply increasing the amount of focus you engage in over time. Just like in the gym if you’re exercising and you can complete 4 sets of 10 pushups. Eventually, after a few weeks perhaps, you increase it to 4 sets of 12. Then you continue to complete those four sets of 12 for a few weeks, then you to four sets of 14.

With this model, you linearly progress over time. Step by step you allow yourself to get better. As your body adapts to the exercises you can increase the workload or the intensity. The same thing applies to your focus. Begin with small exercises and don’t judge yourself based on how well you do at the start. 

Let go of the need for results. Don’t attach yourself to an outcome because the outcome is likely delayed. Just like in the gym, you don’t see the rewards for your efforts until weeks or months later. The same thing applies to your focus. The rewards are on a delayed schedule. Therefore you need to set your goal to improve your focus and then forget about the goal. Rid yourself of needing to achieve the results, as when we leave you frustrated. Learn how to fall in love with the process instead, and the results will come just by virtue of time. If you learn how to fall in love with the process you can have anything you want.

There is a recipe in the scriptures that will teach you how to begin to overcome your worry, fears, and anxieties. It is found in the book of Phillipains.

⁶ Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; ⁷ and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Philipians 4:6-7

We have read this verse many times before, but I think that we tend to overlook one important component. We will discuss this component in a moment.

When we read these passages we focus on the line “be anxious for nothing”. Then what most of us tend to do is say “well that simply is not possible. There is no way to be anxious for nothing“. What we fail to realize is that we did not read half of the recipe for removing worry from our lives. The vital component of treating our worry problem is found in the use of a thankful attitude.

The Bible does not say that we will magically be anxious for nothing. But instead, we must combine “casting care on Him” through prayer with an attitude of thanksgiving, and this is what begins to reduce our worry.

The attitude of gratitude is the vital ingredient that we often forget when we seek the help of God. We forget to be thankful for all the many things we already have and instead begin to focus on our current problems. Then we ask God to fix it without first remembering all the times before when He has fixed problem scenarios in our life.

The way we can be free from worry is to combine prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.

What you must do in your prayers is to first be thankful for what God has done, then ask for His help. Then by being grateful, your worry diminishes automatically. This is one of the overlooked truths in the Bible.

If you find yourself worried, first take time to be thankful. Gain some additional perspective about your situation. It is likely not nearly as bad as you think.

Combine this thankfulness with the stoic exercise of negative visualization. That is where you imagine what it would be like if you were in a terrible situation. When you think about what it would be like to be in a worse situation than you are in now, your worry reduces. And not only does your worry reduce, but your thankfulness increases as a result.

What we are beginning to learn is that gratitude actually rewires the mind. And how beneficial it would be for us to cultivate this attitude. If you become a grateful person, people want to help you and do more for you. But no one wants to help a person who is ungrateful. This is why you must learn to have a thankful attitude.

If all you do is develop an attitude of thankfulness, your worry will reduce significantly.

Here is your exercise:

1. Think about what is worrying you.
2. Think about a few items you are grateful for in your life.
3. Finally, think about what it would be like if your situation was far worse than it is. This will also increase your thankfulness naturally.

With this exercise, you can drastically begin to reduce your worry. It is not an emasculated way to approach life. No, everyone loves the person who is thankful and grateful. Incorporate this tool into your daily life and watch your worry decrease.

Your goal should be to make an attitude of thankfulness your constant attitude. Never find yourself without thankfulness and your worry will disintegrate.

Read about how to control anxiety.

Imagine this, the sensation of motivation actually overrides the individual desire to avoid pain. Consider what you are willing to do when you are motivated. You are willing to train your body and subject it to pain and resistance all for some higher goal. You are willing to sit down and study or work even though you would rather be enjoying yourself doing something else. Motivation overrides suffering. 

On the more negative side, imagine a person who is highly motivated to take drugs. You might think that it is obvious that a person is motivated to take drugs because they are simply chasing the high or trying to get away from the pain of the craving. But also consider the following: the drug addict knows that his/her behavior is the source of an incredible amount of suffering in their life. Many also report that they no longer even enjoy the process of taking drugs. So why do they keep doing such thing that is damaging their life so much?

Obviously, there is never one answer to anything, but it is likely a combination of the desire to be free from the pain of craving and a high degree of motivation. A person needs to be highly motivated to do something they do not enjoy and that is bringing negative consequences into their lives.

All of that to say, our motivation can enable us to do things we do not enjoy, and that we do not like. 

Motivation overrides suffering.

So when finding out how to be more motivated, you may find that you yourself are actually already highly motivated. But you simply are not motivated in the direction that you want to be motivated in. 

For instance, many people try to get motivated to train. It is not that they are unmotivated to work out, it is that they are highly motivated to sit on the couch and do nothing.

It is not that you are not motivated to study, but instead, you are highly motivated to watch youtube videos. 

Today’s simple exercise is the following: stop thinking of yourself as a person who lacks motivation. You are not lacking in motivation, you are simply motivated towards the things you would rather not be motivated towards. Once you have identified this, you can start working to become more motivated toward those things you actually want.

Learn to hold one thought in your head at a time. When we procrastinate, it is because we can put the task that needs to be done out of our minds and think about something else. We can only do this for so long until the impending deadline and pain become so intolerable that we actually sit down and get to work. So once that thought of the work that must be done becomes the dominant thought in the mind, that is when we begin to take action towards it. 

So if you can bypass the part of your brain that wants you to distract yourself and instead engage in a meditative practice by concentrating on the tasks that must be done, you can become motivated. Hold the task in your mind, and it will become painful. But that pain will actually, turn out to be the motivating factor that allows you to start working. And once you start working, it is much easier to finish working. 

The ability to be motivated comes down to being able to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Though what we often associate with motivation is a “fired up sensation”, that is only one part of the story (though in all truth, it is the best part of the story). But how many times have we felt that motivated sensation and then done nothing about it?

“In the morning I’m going to wake up early and go to the gym and eat chicken and broccoli and get eight hours of sleep each night and get fit.”

You, the night you decide to make a big change in your life

Those are all the things we feel as we are going to bed. We are highly motivated in that situation, yet we do nothing. And then what happens when morning rolls around? Apparently, someone broke into your house that night and stole all of your motivation. It is gone never to be seen again.

That is an example we all know probably too well about feeling the sensation of motivation but failing to take purposeful action in the direction of our goals. And hopefully, that allows you to see in your mind the difference between motivation that leads to action and motivation that is just simply enjoyable. 

So practice today holding one thought in your mind, concentrating on the work you need to do, and do not worry about chasing the sensation of motivation. If you will just get started on your work, many times you will find that your motivation rises later on to meet you and that your motivation overrides suffering.