This will be a sequel to my post on the No-BS guide to discipline, click here if you have not read my last post yet:

Discipline and motivation are commentary to one another, so this edition will be a further in-depth extension on my last post. I highly recommend you read that one first to get the full details.

Within this post you will learn about:

• What is motivation

• External vs. Internal Motivation

• How to build long lasting motivation

This will definitely be an interesting read because I will break down the concept of motivation step by step, and after reading this post you will be able to stick to your habits a lot easier than before.

If you already read my No-BS guide to discipline that is 😅

So, what is my goal with this newsletter?

My Goal with this Newsletter is to provide education on productivity, mental, and physical performance that will change your life.

This newsletter not only is a place of education but also, an opportunity to cultivate a fostering community of strong and ambitious young men so that we are able to help out one another in these times of weakness and comfort.

Because the hard times are coming soon.

I don’t know exactly when, but I assume that it will happen in our generation’s lifespan, like how the saying goes, easy times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.

Throughout these posts, I will be only talking about my stories and the mistakes/lessons that I’ve made along the way. So hopefully this will be a place where people can talk about their problems and uplift one another.

If that resonates with you, I’ll highly appreciate it if you subscribe to this newsletter so that you will be up to date with the latest information and get access to exclusive posts like this one, it’s a win-win for both of us.

I can ensure that you will learn something new about motivation after reading this post.

Let’s begin!

What is Motivation?

Motivation is the dopamine rush or activation that you receive when you want to perform a certain task. Dopamine is a chemical that is found in the brain and is released whenever you do an action that you enjoy doing. Think of dopamine as the brain’s reward system whenever you perform an action that you deem fun. It then reinforces that action through repeated repetition. So, to summarize it, the sense of motivation that you feel is the cause of the release of dopamine which helps motivate you to repeat that specific action.

The downside of dopamine is that it can be released through positive and negative actions.

Some examples of positive action would be:

• Biking

• Running

• Weightlifting

• Eating healthy

• Completing a hard task

• Learning

• Socializing

• etc.

Now those things might not be fun for the average person due to the high barrier to entry. So, what you deem fun can vary from person to person. These habits above only begin to be fun once you complete it over and over again, even when you don’t want to. That is when you begin to be motivated to continue doing it, or what we call “long lasting motivation which we will discuss later in the post. Sure, you can still feel motivated to perform these tasks every so often, either from social media or any external source that can motivate you.

But you can’t rely on this type of motivation because it comes and goes and is not consistent. In order to build a habit, there are going to be some days where you don’t want to do it, so that’s a bad situation to be in if that external motivation goes away. What we want to focus on is building our internal motivation.

External vs Internal Motivation

External motivation is motivation that you receive from outside forces, example of this could be,

• Social media

• Your environment

• Your friends

• Your family

• etc.

This type of motivation helps you accomplish a hard task, but it comes in short bursts and is inconsistent. To ensure that you stick to a habit, it has to be done even when you don’t feel like it. So, relying on external motivation is not going to be sufficient enough you will feel motivated on some days but not all days.

Internal motivation is motivation that you receive from within yourself, this type of motivation works differently than external motivation since you are able to build it up over time. It is built through repetition and is more reliable than external motivation.

How to build long lasting Motivation

So, this is the part where you wanted to figure out, how do I build long lasting motivation?

Now this is where it gets interesting.

Long lasting motivation is built upon internal motivation, and do I build up my internal motivation you might ask?

Before, I tell you, let me ask 1 question.

Say, there are 2 people, there is one person who is a beginner at the gym. He has never worked out before and is now starting to build the habit of working out.

Now there is the second person, he is an avid weightlifter and has done countless of workouts in addition to have 5+ years of experience under his belt.

Which person is going to have a harder time sticking to this habit?

Obviously, the beginner is going to have a much harder time staying consistent than the advanced weightlifter.

That is the key to long lasting motivation, CONSISTENCY

This is due to the concept known as building your neural pathways.

Your neural pathways is the system that determines how prone you are to sticking to a habit. Say for example, when you complete a task that you didn’t want to do, your neural pathways get stronger and reinforces that habit.

The reason why the weightlifter with more experience will stick to his habits longer than the beginner is simply because he has trained to neural pathways to reinforce the habit of lifting weights over a long period of time.

Most people don’t exercise because they assume that level of pain is going to forever stay the same to when they were a beginner. But that is simply not the case.

Most intermediate to advanced weightlifters would agree that it is actually easier to go to the gym just because they have been doing it for so long now.

So, in conclusion, how do you build long lasting motivation?

You just have to be consistent in the habit that you're trying to be consistent in.

It will take a lot of repetition so that that habit is now reinforced into your brain.

This won’t be an easy task however, which is why leveling up the skill of discipline is so important. Building up your discipline skill in conjunction to your internal motivation will help you stay extremely consistent in any hard task that you are doing.

Again, if you haven’t read my No-BS guide to discipline, then I would highly recommend that you do so that you are able to build that strong foundation for yourself.

Well, that is all that I have for you today, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this edition of the Peak Performance newsletter. So far, we have discussed about how to build discipline and motivation, but we will gradually talk more about other topics in the mental health and productivity side of the spectrum. Remember that in order to master self-improvement, you cannot master only one pillar but instead multiple aspects of it. So that is what I try to do on this newsletter, just give a wide range of knowledge since I believe that this type of education can be life changing.

Also, I apologize for the delay in making this post, it took a while to condense mostly everything that I know about motivation into one full guide. I’ll probably begin to section my topics in smaller, more digestible posts that I’ll be able to get it out in time for you.

But that is up to you, do you enjoy this longer full guides on this newsletter, or do you prefer shorter sections of the same topic?

Let me know in the comments below 😎

Did you enjoy this post, did you hate it, what you like about it? Tell me in the comments below, it would be nice to discuss with each one of you guys on self-improvement-based topics.

If you enjoyed this enjoyed this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, feel free to subscribe so that you are up to date with the newest posts. It will also help me out a ton so that this education gets out to more people who need it.

I’ll see you in the next one, PEACE 😎😎