Manufacturing Your Own Momentum

The last 6 months have probably been the most productive of the last 2 years.

After lawsuits, technical issues and a whole bunch of life changes, I’ve had to manufacture momentum out of thin air, remember what it’s like to move forward and build something new.

Maybe you know what I’m talking about.

When you’re stuck, it’s easy to stay stuck. It’s literal physics.

an object remains at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.

And the longer you’ve been stuck, the easier it is.

I did the Spartan World Championships this past weekend in Lake Tahoe. It was my first time in a Spartan and the first time in a long time doing any sort of obstacle race.

There were several times throughout the race that I thought “I don’t know how to do this.” It was like real time problem problem solving where I had to observe, test and sometimes just suck it up and figure it out.

One thing I figured out quickly is that just standing, looking at the obstacle doesn’t do anything for you.

If you want to finish almost any obstacle, it all can be solved with two pieces of advice:

• Do a Violent Jumpstart
• Do The Next Thing.
  

Do a Violent Jumpstart

an object remains at rest, unless acted upon by an outside force.

With every obstacle, there’s a part where you decide to attack it. You go for it.

You gotta be your own outside force. There’s no getting around this. Sometimes a plane is dropped out of the sky on you, but most times you gotta do this yourself.

So how do you do it?

Violently.

This doesn’t mean out of control or reckless, but it does mean you go after it with force.

You have to create your own outside pressure and use that as your initial fuel.

That’s why I’m not a huge fan of moderation or graduated plans . It’s not my personality and there’s enough people on the internet that will give you that message if you want it.

But more than that – moderation does nothing for you if you’re legitimately stuck. Sometimes you need a violent force to wake you the hell up, rip you out of your self-induced misery and self-indulgent theorizing and get you moving.

In the Spartan race, there was a 400 pound tire flip. The hardest part is getting your initial grip and raising it the first 1/2 inch. That’s probably 95% of the challenge.

You need to figure out the grip, probably make some weird noises, and look red in the face until you get that 1/2 inch.

Once you’ve violently broken out of your stagnation and created some motion, the next thing is to keep it and use it.

Do The Next Thing

Once you’re motion, use it. Find the next thing.

The next grip. The next rung. The next step.

It’s easy to overcomplicate this. It’s easy to overthink it.

Don’t.

Just do it.

The next thing.

And yes, you already know what this is.

You’re just likely putting it off because it seems scary and you’re looking for a way out.

If it’s scary. Do it scared anyways.

Then do the next thing.

And keep running with it.

The longer you wait to pull one thing off. The longer you wait across the board.

But if you bite the bullet – just do the damn thing – you’ll be surprised. It takes 5 minutes. Or 1 hour. Or the whole day

Whatever it is.

You handle the obstacle easily.

And that’s a win.

So you build on that.

The more you do. The more you do.

And the more you do, the more you do.

It’s addicting.

And pretty soon you’re building a snowball of momentum.

If the first thing you do when you get up in the morning is hit the snooze, you’re going to hit the snooze no the rest of stuff in your life.

If the first thing you do is take a cold shower and knock out 100 pushups, it’s easier to take that initiative to everything else.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

Start. Violently if needed.

Then do the next thing.

Manufacture your own momentum.

Don’t stop.