The Best Way To Get Motivated Is To Get Pissed

I’m a planner. I like to set goals for myself and I like to put into detail how I will get myself from where I am currently stationed to where I need to be. The way I see things, there’s always a rational way to go about achieving a goal — so I figure out how I can get what I want and then I go about getting it.

Getting progress started can sometimes prove a bit difficult; not because the task itself proves to be difficult, but rather because motivating ourselves to act can be strenuous.

How do you motivate yourself? Do you sit around and wait for motivation to fall over you or do you direct your mind in a certain direction easing your way into mobility?

I’ve recently been searching for a way to inspire myself into being motivated, but have found that with the cold of this winter — I’m not a winter person — I would rather just sit at home and order some hookers. I kid -- I don’t pay for sex, but I would rather just sit my ass at home and have some of my ladies on call give me a good grinding.

I came to realize yesterday halfway though my midday kale salad that I once was extraordinarily motivated. I had a poor work ethic — true. But I was incredibly driven at the start. Nowadays I have a great work ethic, but found that I am having issues getting that fire burning — the same fire that once burned me so intensely that I would literally find myself shaking.

And then it hit me: there are two causes of unbreakable motivation. One, you fall in love with your dreams, you become obsessed with what you want to achieve out of life. Or two, you get really, really fucking pissed.

I most definitely dabbled in the latter. I was an extraordinarily angry child growing up. Just about everything pissed me of — my parents, teachers, siblings and all the dumb things people did in my presence — all annoyed the shit out of me.

However, thanks to this anger I was able to stay focused and accomplish more by the age of 21 than most people have by the age of 40. Anger motivated me unlike anything else ever could. In order to be motivated, we need to feel as if we are being moved by a force that is both outside us and within us. In order for us to feel motivated we need to feel — something. The more intense the emotion, the stronger the motivation.

No emotions are ever felt more intensely than love and anger. This should come as no surprise seeing as how the two are so closely related. I am sure that you have heard the saying: there’s a thin line between love and hate; well, neurologists will agree. When looking at the physical workings of the brain, love and hate are very closely related emotions.

Love and anger (I know that there is a difference between hate and anger, but for the purpose of this article I will use them interchangeably seeing as how they too are very closely related) both work as amazing motivators. Either become obsessed or pissed off and I promise you that if you stay in that state you’ll be able to accomplish anything.

Being angry, I have to come to acknowledge, is my most natural state. I have been fighting it for quite some while, doing yoga, meditating, running. But as of yesterday I decided to say f*ck it all. I am pissed and I have been since the day the doctor slapped my bottom; I’m tired of trying to suppress it. I shouldn’t have to suppress it and I refuse to do so any longer.

But don’t get the wrong idea here; I’m not pissed off at the world. Sure, I could spend the rest of eternity writing down all the things wrong with this with everybody else, but to be quite frank: I don’t give a rat’s ass about what the f*ck the rest of the world has planned for themselves. I am pissed off at the only person I have a right to be pissed off at: myself.

If you haven’t quite picked this up from reading some of my articles — I have an enormous ego. If it were any bigger I would have to hire a midget to help me carry it around (I don’t know why a midget but the imagery makes me smile).

Like I said before, I have accomplished quite a bit already, but at the same time not nearly enough. I am beyond hungry; I’m starving. And although I believe myself to be a somewhat patient person, I want success right now. I don’t want it tomorrow, I don’t want it next week or next year; I want success yesterday.

I’m pissed off that I haven’t yet been able to reach it and because of coming to this realization — coming to realize that I am not living up to my potential — makes me angrier than a blue-balled, sex-deprived sex addict.

Each of us sets for ourselves a set of expectations according to what we believe our true potential to be. Whether or not our assessment of our potential is correct, we can save for another discussion.

If you are looking for a way to motivate yourself, a way to get angry, get pissed, then take a hard look at yourself and not at what you have accomplished, but at how far you are from living up to your potential. Let me tell you something — if you aren’t living up to your potential then you are committing the gravest sin; you are wasting your limited time in existence.

Let me break it down for you this way: you are capable of so much, but because you are a lazy f*ck you don’t have the motivation or courage to live. You are slowly wasting away and you don’t even know it. Don’t give me any of the standard, pre-set excuses you give yourself each and every morning when you wake up and have to stare yourself in the eyes — in the eyes of wasted potential, in the eyes of a failure.

If you are comfortable with mediocrity then feel free to drown in it; you’d be doing the human race a favor. Maybe you are one of those few people that have been able to manifest their potential into reality — I’m not one of them, yet. But if it takes me every waking moment of the rest of my life I will reach it — or die trying. Either become obsessed or get pissed. Otherwise, you're just a waste of space.

Paul Hudson | Elite. 

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