Living is easy, but to live to your full potential, you must make an effort. Thrive on effort because the more effort you make, the easier life gets. Effort is a pathway to increasing your AQ.
Every year it rises. Each generation takes more effort. Be thankful to be born when you were because the generation that follows will demand more effort than yours did. I have a greater compassion for the youth, because I see the effort they put is more than I did at their age.
What can you do to reduce effort in your life? What little things can you do in areas you've always done them that will lessen the load a bit?
In the realm of personal growth, it's essential to recognize the balance between ease and effort. Often, we exert extreme effort in specific areas like education but tend to lean towards ease in our professional tasks. The key is to push ourselves into more challenging tasks, even if they seem daunting or conflict-inducing.
Identify Challenging Tasks: Pinpoint tasks that you usually avoid, such as asking for payments or sending invoices.
Visual Continuum: Create a visual representation of the effort-ease continuum and place it on your wall.
Self-Assessment: Regularly evaluate where you stand on this continuum and aim to push yourself towards more effort-intensive tasks.
Action Plan: Develop a checklist of difficult tasks and commit to tackling them one by one, gradually increasing your comfort with effort over ease. We can control our effort, but not the result. I'm often reminded of this fact. Our effort is all we have control over! We can't control another person's effort. Motivation and sacrifice. Action and effort. Effortlessness is when you discover the key that the effort itself is the reward. The reward is the work. The actions you take, from a creative source, are reward enough. An artist creates art for the sake of creating.
Living is easy, but to live up to your full potential, life demands your greatest effort. Thrive on effort because the more effort you make, the easier life becomes. You are not acting from a one-way bargain perspective The source of effort. What makes one person willing to put in the effort, while another avoids effort altogether? How can you explain why one person is willing to put in more effort than another? What spurs us to take action in the first place? Action is the precursor to effort. But effort does not always translate into recognizable action. In fact, one can make a great effort, but the results may show otherwise. I have great compassion for another because I realize that they may be putting in more effort just to live than I do. It takes effort to make a difference. Far greater effort than most are willing to make, which is why so few people make a difference. But what if you discovered the source of effort? What if found the nitro behind the engine that produced effort? The more that is handed to us, the more effortlessly we achieve our desires, the greater our conditioning to get it without much effort. If you can get it without working for it, why would you? There's a perception that much of the wealth gain wealth without effort. Is this a misperception? Yes and no. There are certainly cases where wealth is unearned. In fact, did you know that there's a tax category called unearned income? Most of us don't know about it because we don't get any so-called 'unearned income.' The less we have to work for it, the less the motivation to put in any effort. When what you get is handed to you, why would you put in any effort to get it? It often takes a painful experience to stir us into action. Otherwise, why would we change? America is on the brink. Truly, we are in a downward spiral that seems to be accelerating. Because of globalization, our downfall will have an impact on the rest of the world. Someday, history books will use America as a example of what not to do. In another world, other species would study humans as an example of what not to do. Until we must make it fly, we won't make it fly.
Until we must do the work, we won't. What made America great is not within our grasp because we are not the generation that had to work for it. We were born into privilege, and entitlement is simply the result of always being given more than we needed. If you want a fat unhealthy dog, feed him whatever he wants. When he begs for the food you're eating, give it to him. But if you want a healthy dog, you give it what it needs. Nothing more.
If you want a healthy body, feed it what it needs, not what it wants. If you want a healthy government, feed it what it needs, not what it wants. It wants attention, but it needs discipline.
If you want a healthy marriage, feed it what it needs, not what it wants. Wants are not needs, but we often turn our wants into needs and that's where problems begin. (begin rant) Giving cell phones to homeless? What's the motivation to work for it when it's given to them? On paper, the idea makes sense, but how many homeless people have gotten a job as a result? All I ever see them doing is watching youtube. They use up their data on youtube, not on finding a job. For crist sake, restrict the sites they can visit. I am sure you plenty of them are using to data to watch porn. Way to go big brother. (end of rant) The more the government gives, the less motivated those who receive are willing to do to get it. It's simple conditioning.Resistance
To understand effort, we must look at resistance. To resist an undesirable outcome is powerful motivator. We will often be more willing to put in the effort to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.
3 levels of motivation
Could
Should
Must The things that get done are the things we must do. What pushes a task into the must category? Pain. I would argue pain to avoid is far more motivating the pleasure to receive. Is there a productive way to inflict pain? Deadlines Deadlines drive action. The more at stake that is tied to the deadline, the more motivated we'll be to act. If you sign up for a 100 bicycle ride, you may show up under trained. The pain you suffer as a result is something that you'll remember when you sign up for another. It'll either be the pain of not finishing or the suffering you'll endure if you do. Monetary gain and momentary pain
You want more money. You set out to work for yourself so you can keep more of what you earn. But how much you need is a direct result of the lifestyle you want to create. To live the life we want, costs us about $100/day. But to live the life we need can be much less.
Make a list of needs vs. wants.
Needs:
Food (Health)
Shelter
Love
Security Monthly cost of all our needs: Wants:
Travel
Wealth
Entertainment
Popularity Monthly cost of all our wants: When mixup your wants and needs, you feel you need to do more than you have to do. All you have to do is fulfill your needs. Everything else is optional.
An elective in school is an optional course of study. Core courses are those required to graduate. But electives are where the creative juices flow. In home schooling, I teach Ukulele which is an elective course.
My other business is helping authors publish. It's also an elective. My primary audience is creatives.
When electives become the core.
Our decisions of what to focus on are we define our lives.
If there's an ant who is going after a treat, the only way to stop it in it's track is to inflict pain on it.
Dogs will do what they want until pain teaches them otherwise.
Burn the boats and you'll have to swim home.
The work that MUST get done is the work that WILL get done. But MUST is not a matter of WILL. We all want a million dollars, but how many of the willingness to do what it takes to earn the million?
Sacrifices must be made.
Sacrifice is defined as "destruction or surrender of something for the sake of something else, something given up or lost, example: the sacrifices made by parents for the sake of a better life for their children."
Has society lost it's willingness to sacrifice?
The problem with global warming is that it's effects are not necessarily felt by those inflicting the pain.
The effect comes at such a long delay, the causes are not obvious. Even if they were obvious, it's the lack of an individuals willingness to sacrifice for the sake of the environment.
Ok, back to how to solve the homeless problem.
It's about making the idea of homelessness so painful that people will do whatever it takes to avoid becoming homeless. But what defines pain from person to person will vary.
Many are mentally ill. That's more appropriate of a problem for the government to solve. They have plenty of misallocated funding to address the issue.