Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 152 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great and You might be able to hear that the birds are chirping outside.
We use the word chirp to refer to the sound that birds make when they sing.
So the birds are chirping and I think you've probably heard that in several of my episodes.
I hope that you don't mind.
I like it.
I think that it adds some good background noise.
And whenever I hear birds chirping in the morning, it motivates me.
It makes me want to have a good day and just enjoy that morning and that day.
So it provides a little bit of motivation for me.
Speaking of motivation, we're going to talk about motivation and discipline in today's episode.
I mentioned this in both of the last two episodes.
I mentioned this topic, but now I want to dedicate a whole episode to this topic because I think it's a really interesting subject to explore in more detail, in a deeper way, because a lot of people talk about motivation and discipline, especially in the personal development world, and maybe some of you like watching videos or reading books related to personal development, and so you've probably heard a lot about motivation and discipline, and I'm gonna offer a slightly different opinion than the opinion that you usually hear when people talk about these two things.
So I think this will be interesting today.
And before we start remember, of course, that you can sign up for my advanced podcast episodes If you want to practice with real English spoken fast.
The link will be down below.
You can click on that and sign up to become a Listening Time family member and you'll get two new advanced episodes every month.
And if you want to practice with two people talking instead of one and you want to learn a lot about the different regions of the United States, then make sure to sign up for my US Conversations podcast.
The link is also down below in the description.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about motivation and discipline.
So I've been thinking a lot about these two concepts recently because of a video that I saw.
I was watching a video in French because I'm learning French, and and this person was talking about motivation and discipline and he mentioned that most people in the personal development world really champion the idea that discipline is much, much more important than motivation.
When you champion some idea, we're saying that you really support and kind of preach this idea.
This is what you believe.
So many people champion this idea.
And I've heard this many times when I listen to different people YouTubers podcasters, whoever talking about being successful.
They talk a lot about how motivation comes and goes and This is not what makes the difference.
What you really need to do is have discipline and just do things every day when you're supposed to do them.
Whether or not you feel motivated and whether or not you want to do them.
Just do them, and then you'll see the results eventually.
And obviously, there's a lot of truth to this.
I'm not denying this at all.
But that YouTuber that I was watching in French, he offered this opinion that, even though we can all agree that discipline is important, motivation is really important and sometimes even more important than discipline, or at least in many situations it's as important as discipline.
And I started thinking about this and I was thinking about my Italian challenge that I just completed, And I thought about how true this really is, how true it is that motivation is oftentimes equally as important, or more important sometimes, than discipline.
So I want to talk about a few areas in my life in which motivation is equally as important or sometimes more important than discipline.
And so this kind of goes against the predominant idea in the personal development world.
The word predominant refers to something that has more authority or is more common.
So I'm going against the predominant idea here.
But again, I'm not trying to say that discipline is less important.
It's not important.
Of course not.
Most of you know by now that I really appreciate discipline and I really try to be a disciplined person.
This is extremely important.
But I don't think that we should downplay the importance of motivation.
To downplay something means to underappreciate it and make it seem less important than it is.
So I think we need to value motivation just like we value discipline.
So let me talk about four different areas in my life, and maybe in your life as well, in which motivation is extremely important.
So first of all, with language learning.
I've already talked about this, i talked about it in the last two episodes, so i'll just kind of go quickly through this one.
But during my 100 day italian challenge, i was motivated for the first 50 days because i thought that i might continue on with italian after this challenge.
But around day 50 I decided that I wasn't going to continue on with Italian.
And so I lost motivation for the second half of that challenge.
So during the first 50 days, I learned a lot.
I improved a ton.
And during the second 50 days, I didn't improve that much.
However, I was super disciplined.
I studied virtually every day.
I think there was one day when I couldn't Because of a lot of stressful circumstances and things that were happening that day.
But I basically studied every day.
I was really organized.
I followed a very specific routine.
I was extremely disciplined throughout this whole challenge.
However, during the second half, I wasn't motivated.
And...
What happened?
Well, when I was listening to things, I wasn't really paying much attention.
My mind was somewhere else.
We use that phrase in English.
Your mind is somewhere else to mean that you're distracted.
You're thinking about something else.
So my mind was somewhere else when I was listening, paying that much attention to what I was reading.
I wasn't focusing on the new words as much.
I wasn't really trying to notice and retain these new words.
I was kind of just doing the studying just to do it.
I wasn't motivated to really improve a lot because I knew that I wasn't gonna continue on with Italian after this.
I was just gonna complete this challenge to help other people, but I'm not gonna continue on with Italian, so I lost motivation and I wasn't really able to learn as much during those second 50 days, even though i was extremely disciplined.
So i want to encourage you to make sure that you're disciplined with your language learning.
Of course, that's really important.
However, you need to have goals.
It's important to visualize your goals, visualize what you want to accomplish with the language that you're learning And feed your curiosity.
Make yourself more curious and interested in the language.
If you do this, if you focus on really interesting and engaging content, it's going to make a huge difference.
You're going to be paying much more attention while you're reading and listening.
And it will seem like a fun, and interesting activity and not just a chore that you have to do.
A chore refers to a task that needs to be completed, usually at home, like washing the dishes, for example.
So we don't want our language learning to be a chore.
We want to have these really interesting and exciting goals and consume interesting and exciting content.
All right.
Another area in my life in which I've seen that motivation is equally as important as discipline is working out, exercising.
So I remember in 2022, I was living in Mexico and I went to a gym which was about 10 minutes from my apartment on foot walking.
So I was very disciplined terms of going to the gym.
I went when I had planned to go.
I stuck to my schedule.
We can say you stick to a schedule.
This means that you adhere to it, you follow it.
So I stuck to this schedule I.
I went early in the morning.
Sometimes it was still completely dark outside and I walked to the gym early in the morning and I always did my workouts.
I was extremely disciplined with my workouts during that year.
However, I wasn't motivated.
I went because I was supposed to go.
That's what I needed to do.
But I wasn't excited to go to the gym.
It wasn't fun for me.
I didn't have specific goals that I was trying to accomplish.
No, I wasn't motivated.
I just went because in a very disciplined way because that's what I was supposed to do, right?
So what were my results?
I had very little gains.
We like to use the word gains when talking about the gym and working out, referring to getting stronger or bigger, more muscular.
So my gains were minimal.
And I didn't push myself to lift heavier weight all the time.
So I wasn't really getting much stronger because I was just lifting the necessary weight and then stopping and then going to the next exercise.
And I repeated that and then went home.
I wasn't motivated to push myself to lift heavier weight and try new exercises, new lifts.
No, I didn't do any of that.
And so I just went to the gym.
I always went.
But I didn't really have great results.
I just got a little stronger.
I looked a little better, probably.
But I wasn't progressing that much because I didn't really have the goal to reach a certain weight or lift a certain amount of weight properly.
I didn't have that motivation behind my exercise.
So discipline is, without a doubt, extremely important when it comes to working out exercising, losing weight, getting stronger, etc.
No one will argue that discipline isn't important.
It's extremely important.
However, your results will be minimal if you're not motivated.
Okay, you'll improve, you'll see results.
But there's a big difference between someone who's disciplined and goes to the gym when they should and someone who's disciplined but is also really motivated to get stronger or lose weight or whatever.
So I saw that clear as day when I went to the gym in 2022.
That's an area in my life in which I was disciplined, but I wasn't motivated.
And so the results weren't that impressive.
Another area in my life and in, I think, everyone's life in which it's important to be motivated and not only disciplined, is succeeding in your career.
Okay, discipline is very important in this area.
Of course, you need to show up to work every day, show up on time, do your tasks, meet the deadlines.
You need to have discipline in order to be a good worker, of course however, if you really want to succeed in your career and move up and kind of distance yourself from the competition, motivation is essential.
Motivation is very noticeable when it comes to the workplace.
For example, I can think of certain restaurants, even fast food restaurants, like my favorite fast food restaurant, which is In-N-Out.
When I go there, I noticed that more often than not, the employees seem to be motivated.
Not just disciplined and not just polite and doing their work.
They seem motivated to give me a good experience, make me feel welcome.
They seem motivated to do their job well and I'm sure a lot of them are motivated to get a promotion and things like that.
And it makes the experience very different, because when I go to other fast food restaurants that motivation is not there.
I rarely see it and it makes my experience worse.
It's just not good when someone isn't motivated to do their job.
Recently I had an issue with my car insurance and And the agent that does my insurance.
She really helped me out to kind of solve this issue.
And I could see that she was really motivated to help me fix this issue.
She wasn't just doing it because that's her job and she has to do it.
She really wanted to help me.
She was motivated to do her job well and help her client and And even though that insurance company doesn't have the lowest rates in this case, rates refers to the prices that I pay the insurance company doesn't have the lowest rates.
However, because I know my agent is motivated to help me and do her job well, I want to stay with this company, even though I might be paying a little bit more.
So you can see how discipline is important, but motivation makes a big difference between different workers.
And if I, the customer, am satisfied, that's going to help me.
These workers get more business, make more money, get higher positions, et cetera.
And for me in my life, in my career, I've seen this where, when I make content that I'm really motivated to make I'm excited about the topic that I'm gonna talk about, for example You can really hear the difference.
You can hear it in my voice.
It's more exciting when listening to the episode.
It's more interesting.
My motivation shows sometimes when I'm talking about topics that...
I'm really motivated to talk about.
Whereas when I make content that I'm not so motivated to make, it's not that interesting for me.
It's not as nice to listen to, in my opinion.
I don't have that same quality in my voice, that excitement.
I've noticed this.
I don't know if you've noticed it or not, but I think sometimes you can hear a difference when I'm talking about something that I'm really interested in.
My voice sounds a little different.
It's just a funner experience to listen to.
And I've been trying to tell my wife this because, as you probably know, because I mentioned it in the last couple episodes, she's doing a Spanish podcast, like mine, for people that want to learn Spanish.
And this is new for her.
And she's like questioning like oh, how do i know what topics to talk about?
And things like that.
And i told her try to talk about topics that are fun for you, that you're motivated to talk about, because people will notice this when they listen to you.
They'll appreciate this.
People appreciate your motivation as a worker And when people appreciate that, more people listen, more people buy from you whatever and you have more success.
So that's another area in which motivation is very important, in my opinion.
And one other bonus area I wanted to talk about.
This one is counterintuitive.
Most people would think this one is all about discipline. but it's not.
And that is waking up early.
So of course, discipline is key when it comes to waking up early.
This is a really, really important thing.
I'm not denying that, of course.
However, I want to add that motivation actually makes it much easier to wake up early, even if you're disciplined.
So I'm very disciplined with waking up early.
If I decide I want to wake up early, I do it.
Okay, that's not a problem for me.
However, it's not easy when I actually wake up.
When I wake up, it's difficult to actually open my eyes and get out of bed and get going.
That's always difficult, even though I'm disciplined with waking up when my alarm wakes me up, right.
However, when I have something that gives me motivation to start the day, it makes it much easier to wake up.
For example, if I am going on a trip that day, it's really easy for me to wake up, even at 4am, for example.
If I know I'm going to travel that day and have this exciting trip.
It's easy to wake up early when my alarm sounds.
And I remember many years ago I really liked playing golf and I played pretty early in the morning and it was really easy for me to wake up early in the morning because I knew I was going to go play golf, which was super fun for me.
So if you have something fun or interesting planned, it makes waking up early a lot easier, at least in my experience.
So one thing that we can do to add this motivation to our discipline and make it easier to wake up early is is to do things that are fun or rewarding, and maybe do them in the morning so that you're really looking forward to it.
Like when I went to play golf, obviously I had to do other things on those days.
I didn't only play golf and that was it.
I probably had to do some other chores or things that weren't so fun, but because golf was the first thing I was going to do, it made it easy to wake up super early.
Obviously, you're probably not going to be able to schedule all of your fun early in the morning, but maybe you can start the day with something that gives you pleasure, something that is interesting for you to do, and that will help you feel motivated to actually wake up, And it will make it easier to stay disciplined and stick to your schedule and be consistent with this.
Discipline is necessary, but motivation makes it much easier in my opinion.
All right.
So those were some different areas in my life in which I've seen that motivation is as important or sometimes more important than discipline.
But again, I want to stress that discipline is extremely important.
I'm not trying to downplay that.
So both of these two things are important in our lives.
I hope this episode was interesting for you.
And if you feel like you need to challenge yourself more with more difficult content, then make sure to become a Listening Time family member so you can get my advanced episodes.
The link is down below in the description.
That's patreon.com listening time.
And you can also sign up for my US Conversations podcast to hear my conversations with other English teachers from around the country.
It's really fun, it's really interesting, and it's great practice for your listening.
The link is also down below.
That's patreon.com slash usconversations.
And, as always, please share this podcast with anyone else you know who might find it useful, and give it a five-star rating and write a review, if you can.
All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
