Clarification

You can seek accomplishment, which leads to a feeling, or you can seek a feeling which lead to accomplishment.  I would submit that for many of the toughest tasks on Earth, seeking a feeling first takes you much farther.

Say you want to be a Navy SEAL.  Among many military friends I have, I have a couple ex-SEAL’s on my Facebook, one of which talks about it from time to time about it.  He has particularly good perspective since he was also a BUD/S instructor. The deal, as I understand it, is to make it through the next 20 minutes, or hour, or 3 hours, over and over again. If you focus on the task as a whole–becoming a SEAL–you fail. That was the most common motivational error people made: looking at the entirety of the process.

And he has not said this, but it seems obvious to me that at some level successful trainees have to grow to LOVE hard continuous work.  It is exciting.  Every evolution gives them a chance to feel engaged, alive.  Now, go hard for four or five days straight–Hell Week is not actually a week–and you’re not going to win any enthusiasm awards (an Air Force Spec. Op friend said they had them playing with sand in a volleyball court after 96 hours with about 30 minutes of sleep total), but something like that, in my opinion, has to be there.  You have to look at challenge as something you embrace–embrace the suck, actually, is a phrase I have seen a lot in a lot of contexts.

“I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. “  Vince Lombardi.

 I read happy people get more done, and I would have to believe people who feel excited by life get more done.  John Wooden LOVED basketball.  He loved it.  And this love caused him to want to learn every day, to improve every day.  He never worked: he expressed his affection and passion in a structured way which simply happened to get him paid every two weeks, with a bonus for a championship.

This is all of course just a way of saying it is the journey that counts, but really at the end of the day we are all seeking feelings, and the closest feeling is the one you can feel NOW, without getting out of your chair, which you felt today and will feel tomorrow.  Let that fucker loose, if it promises to lead you anywhere.  Don’t set a fucking goal: determine to listen to who you are, at the core of your being.  It will not let you down.  We are all bad ass motherfuckers, but few of us ever get in touch with that energy.

And to be clear: I am talking to myself as well.  I have shit going on I’m not talking about.  But it’s all good. Truly, truly good.