My friend asks me, in reference to a Goggins interview, what do I think about doing things you don’t want to do? Let me write out my thoughts here since I have been thinking on this topic for a long time!
There are many ways of thinking about this topic and depending on which frame of reference you are wearing at any one time, you will form a totally different point of view.
The discipline mindset
“Pain is weakness leaving the body”
Today people talk about doing difficult things as a means to an end, like, you need to work hard to get good results.
But Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, wrote you simply do what is necessary that life throws your way. There was no notion of agency, there was only doing the right thing.
That being said, people two thousand years ago lived with death, war, sickness, famine and struggle but in western society today, people find themselves seeking out struggle instead. Goggins tells the story of a really shitty life, getting beat up by his alcoholic father, living in fear, not being able to join the navy for medical reasons initially, then giving up and gaining 100 pounds and after several years of feeling like a loser, getting inspired once again to take matters into his own hands, lose those 100 pounds and make it into the grueling SEAL training and making it out on the other side even.
The hero’s journey
Finding purpose through some kind of self inflicted struggle is not new though. I recall, casually going through Jordan Peterson’s maps of meaning 1996 lectures, that the hero was an important theme in building the beliefs of old cultures in the past.
Mind hacks
But today, books like Atomic Habits also teach how to make things perhaps we don’t like as more likely our default path, by maybe putting a pair of running shoes next to your bed. Also gamification can be an way to follow up something difficult with a reward, but that can become a vicious loop and can leave you with learning some pretty bad habits in the long run.
Just one step
I remember once hearing this ultra-marathoner answering the “how do you do it” question saying, they don’t thing of the whole thing, they only ever think of the next step. This kind of sounds like “being in the moment” at its core.
Intrinsic motivation
Ultimately we can tap into the less glamorous but more sustainable idea that doing hard things is rewarding at a more natural pace. I have heard Anna Lembke explain this with her “balance scale” analogy that whereas your brain will counteract a pleasurable “hit” with withdrawal, doing something hard will produce its own little high.
But beware burnout
Overdoing it on the pain side can lead to resentment and you can spiral into escapism to deal with the extra stress.
Mindfulness?
Coming back to Marcus Aurelius, embrace the suck, it is the only thing you have but take advantage of it.
“What stands in the way becomes the way”
What if we stop overthinking it and just try living with more presence, turn things we don’t want to do into opportunities as they come up, to challenge ourselves and learn from them.
Do difficult things, but not to get something in return. The universe doesn’t care how hard you work. “Life’s a bitch, and then you die” according to a 1982 Washington Post article.
The universe however is kind of random, with its risk-reward payoffs, so if you do something you don’t want to do, you might succeed. And that is probably for the best. Any kind of system where the reward is guaranteed can cause your brain to merely do the hard thing to get the nice thing, but if it is a sometimes payoff, then we are more likely to do it for the intrinsic reasons.
Path of Most resistance
But getting back to the Huberman Goggins interview. The suck is the way to find yourself.
“…you’ll never in my life hear me tell you I’m missing something. Everybody is, they’re missing this feeling….you challenge yourself into something…call it happiness, peace, whatever…you’ll never hear me say I’m missing something. I found it years ago. You find it in the suck. And you find it repeatedly in the suck to the point where you know exactly who you are.”
Agree, that embracing the suck is good, but probably it is important to learn to frame it to represent something meaningful in your mind. Many times I think there is some crappy experience you are facing and you can try to channel your problem solving skills, decompose it and solve it, and you can reframe it as something you overcame and a problem you solved.
References
https://www.edmylett.com/podcast/david-goggins-victory-in-suffering
Meditations
Atomic Habits
Peterson Maps of Meaning
1982 washington post article
Anna Lembke Dopamine Nation
https://youtu.be/84dYijIpWjQ doing what you dont want to do, Huberman and Goggins. anterior mid singulate cortex