How to Fall in Love with Something
You Don’t Want to Do

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #598: How to Fall in Love with Something You Don't Want to Do

Jeff Sanders
We humans don't like change. We like things the way they are and we fight to keep them

that way. We frequently choose the devil we know, the status quo. If stepping into a better

reality requires even a little effort, we often balk at the chance because we risk our

current level of comfort and risk the possibility that we might fail, that the "better future"

was not all that it seemed. We often don't want to do things that are hard, things that

require new knowledge, things that ask more of us than we are willing to give because

the pain of growth feels insurmountable or simply not worth the effort. We are not logical

and we don't even pretend to be. We are emotional and that emotion wins the day more

often than we intend. We say we want a better life, but do we? Are we willing to do what

it takes? Are we willing to step into an unknown future and just see what happens? Are we willing

to risk losing even a small part of what we have already worked so hard to acquire?

Author Steven Pressfield writes about resistance, an unseeable force that holds us back from

doing our work, from starting a new project, from crawling out of bed on time. We fight

this resistance every day to just simply meet the mediocre bar of survival. But is that

enough? Are we satisfied with average? Are we okay with just being okay? Or are we ready

for something more? Is there a version of our story that ends differently? Can tomorrow

actually be better than today? The episode this week is about love. Or more

specifically, falling in love with the process of change, of doing hard things, of saying

yes to a better tomorrow knowing full well we will have to earn it by doing the work

right now.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle, episode #598: How to Fall in Love with Something You Don't Want to Do.

I am Jeff Sanders and you have reached the podcast that

is dedicated to dining your day before breakfast. I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer.

And to learn more about that, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

Now in the episode this week, I will break down how to take action when you don't feel

like it, how to overcome fears through repeated exposure, and how to ultimately fall in love

with something you have to do but just never want to. Let's get to it.

Recently I watched the new Billy Joel documentary called And So It Goes. And I was blown away.

His talent is remarkable and his life story is truly fascinating. Billy Joel is an unbelievable

talent. And when it comes to music, that of course is his talent. However, like most people,

he has his own struggles. In his case, it was alcohol and relationships and trying to

find out who he really is. And that all set the tone for a life story that played out

in such an emblematic way.

What I really took from Billy Joel's story is that we do things we like. In his case,

it was music. And we do things we're great at. In his case, music was an unbelievable

natural talent that he harnessed for decades. But we more or less struggle with everything

else. As people, we have strengths and we have weaknesses. And our strengths tend to

really shine, especially when we double down on them and we give our all to those abilities.

You could argue in my personal story that I have doubled down, quote unquote, on podcasting,

public speaking, communication, writing books, writing blog posts back in the day. And we

all find an area of our lives where we believe that we excel. And when we give ourselves

fully to those areas, we see tremendous results. But often in that story, we ignore the rest.

Sometimes that works out and those areas are fine. Sometimes we have complete disasters

that show up because we simply ignored areas that needed our attention.

One of the running themes of this podcast since day one has been my own personal search

for a better version of myself. I frequently reference self-awareness, personal growth,

and this quest to dig into who you were born to be because I want to know who I was born

to be. But what if becoming our best self requires more, more than we're willing to

actually give? What if we have to do something or a lot of somethings we just don't want

to do? Well, what then? Well, if you ask David Goggins, the now very famous Navy SEAL and

author of multiple books, including Can't Hurt Me, he will just remind you to stay hard

while he runs another ultra marathon on two broken feet while fighting forest fires and

breaking world records. But I don't think that's it. I don't think that perspective

will fit most people. I also don't think that discipline and this kind of unstoppable

go-go-go attitude is going to get us there, at least not every time and not for some of

the big stuff. I think the answer is actually a lot more romantic, and I literally mean

that. I think the answer to doing hard things is to fall in love with pursuing them, or

at least enough to get the job done and get the result that you want. So what if you actually

love the things you claim to hate? What if it were easy? What if you just haven't found

your angle yet? What if there's a version of you out there somewhere who excels at the

thing you were always running from? I want to explore these concepts and see if you can't

actually fall in love with that thing you think you don't want to do. And maybe right

now that's true. Maybe right now you don't want to do it. But I think it's a lot more

interesting and a lot more impactful to imagine the opposite. That some future version of

yourself actually does love that thing, and then when that transformation takes place,

when you do truly fall in love with the process of doing the hard stuff, that that will transform

your life more than anything else. That that will set you on a path to success you've never

been on before. Because up to this point, you've avoided these hard things. Up to this

point, the difficult and challenging work just sits on the back shelf and you just ignore

it at every turn. But what if it comes front and center? What if you address it head on

and not just do the work, but find a way to truly love the process of doing the work?

When I imagine a marathon, I've run many marathons in my life and I love you as examples because

I think it speaks to the necessity for this process. So back in the day, I did not love

to run. During high school, I did some sprinting and love kind of short bursts, but long distance

running was not a thing for me. Did not like it, did not want to try it. It wasn't until

later on in the end of my college years and then definitely my early twenties, I began

to fall in love with distance running and specifically the process of growth, of improving,

of wanting to run more miles each and every time I set out to run. And so a marathon eventually

became the goal, but that was not the first goal. The first goal was to run one mile and

then two and then three and then five and then 10. But it slowly grew over time as,

and this is the kicker, I fell in love with running itself, specifically running for long

distances. But as I began to fall in love with that process, doing a much longer run

was no longer this daunting task. It was no longer a scary long-term goal. Then all of

a sudden running a half marathon, a full marathon, an ultra marathon, it went from something

that sounded impossible to something that I could literally do next weekend. Like that's

a crazy transformation. How do you get yourself to that point? And not just to be able to

say I could physically do it, but I'm actually looking forward to it and I want to spend

more time in that process. And whether I cross a finish line or not, I still love to run.

Imagine yourself in that scenario, but you yourself not enjoying running. You yourself

thinking a marathon, ultra marathon sounds ridiculous. Can you get yourself to that place

that I got myself to in my twenties? I think you can. I think you can for any of the goals

that you're trying to avoid. You're actively trying to run from.

So let's discuss the solutions to actually go through that process and figure out how

you can make that happen. Let's break down first how to take action when you don't feel

like it through the lens of this quote that I stole from Ernest Hemingway from his novel,

The Sun Also Rises. He has this very specific and poignant quote. He asked the question,

how did you go bankrupt? And the answer two ways, gradually, then suddenly. I think that

speaks volumes to personal growth, to goal achievement in general. How do you do anything

gradually and then suddenly? How will you achieve an enormous goal? Well, gradually

and then suddenly, how will you run a marathon slowly at first and then all at once? How

will you do something you don't want to do? Baby steps and then giant leaps. It's the

compound effect. In the beginning, we're doing very tiny, itty bitty things that feel difficult

even then. And then later on, we're doing enormous things that feel so much easier.

The question that Ernest Hemingway poses in his novel is going bankrupt. It's a very negative

connotation. But it goes both ways. If you're trying to improve your life, this compounding

effect absolutely works. But if you're trying to destroy your life or you're not paying

attention, then you could find yourself on that path as well and ask the question, well,

how did I gain 100 pounds? I don't know. I just gradually over time and then all of a

sudden one day I looked in the mirror and go, ah, that's not what I wanted to see. Right?

That's the process of life. Things we ignore could gradually become problems. Things we

pursue could gradually and then suddenly become enormous successes.

Motivation follows action and then action begets more action. So if you're asking yourself

the question, well, how do I fall in love with something that I don't want to do? The

first step in this process besides acknowledging the compound effect itself is to realize that

your drive, your motivation to do the work, it comes after you do the work. You know,

you don't want to do most things that look and sound like work until you are already

working on those exact things. You don't want to go for a run as much as you will want to

continue running once you are already running. You won't want to study for a test as much

as you will want to experience the feeling of acing that test afterwards.

Motivation follows action. And the simple answer to every single problem outlined in

this episode is going to be work. Just work. It's not a secret here. It's not some weird

mystical thing. The answer to all of this is doing the work. However, the question is

not whether you should opt into more work or not. The question is, how do you con yourself

into doing all of this work when you don't feel like it? There are two approaches to

this. The real answer is to find your angle and work to achieve flow.

So I saw a Facebook ad recently for financial software that said something to the effect

of, you're not bad with money. You just haven't found your system yet. And immediately, I

thought, yes, bingo, that is it. That's how everything works. The problem is not you.

The problem is that you haven't found or connected the dots between how you operate

best and what is required to achieve the goal that you're after. You need your system, your

angle, your connection to the work itself. And then you have found your ticket to making

real tangible progress with a lot less effort and stress and struggle. You need your system.

And specifically with this example of financial software, in the last six months or so, I

found my personal connection to investing and money management. Prior to the last six

months, it was something that I did, but I did begrudgingly. I did because I had to.

I did because it felt like something that was what a smart adult would do, but I didn't

have my connection to it, my system. And then I found a book, which by the way, is called

The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins. I read that book and immediately thought, yes,

this is my system. This is my angle with money. This is the future for how everything for

me will be based. And it has changed my life. Now, this is not a financial podcast. I'm

not going to go into the details of that here, but I will say as an aside that it financially

changed our future. It is fundamentally transformative. And before that book, my life is now before

that book and after, before that moment in time and after. And it's literally a transformation

for my personal view on money, on investments, on retirement, on our future. And it all changed

with my ability to see an angle that works for me. And then all of a sudden now I'm excited.

I have my system. I have my connection and I love the process. Before it was work, it

was a chore. I didn't want to do it. But now I have this potential to move into a flow

state. Flow is a beautiful experience, but you have to be intentional to achieve it.

So there are entire books about flow, but I'll keep this one brief. Focus on the thing

you're after is the ticket to flow. So when you block distractions, you do one thing that

needs to get done and you let yourself go deep into the work for a couple of hours a

day, multiple days in a row. Well, then you achieve this sense of flow very quickly. And

the flow itself is more about mindset than the work itself. It's more about how you think

than about what you're thinking about. So when you achieve a flow state, you are making

hard work actually feel easy because you're building a skill set to focus and dig in deep

and then achieve more and less time and have this real sense of time doesn't matter anymore

because I'm just in the moment and I'm doing the thing. Then hours can pass and you just

feel like nothing happened at all, but everything happened. It's this incredible, amazing thing

that I experienced frequently because I allow myself to dig into things deeply for a few

hours. Usually in the morning, I would say between 9am and 11am on most mornings, I let

myself go deep into a flow state on whatever topic is at hand, whether it's podcasting,

public speaking, investing, you name it. I pick my current focus and I dig in and I let

that flow state show up. I get a green tea going, which I love now, and that becomes

my kind of ticket to extraordinary focus and deep work. And when that flow shows up, it

really doesn't matter what the work is or how difficult it is. It feels easier. It actually

becomes fun and exciting to do. Now, yes, you can kind of double up your flow state

with a bit of caffeine. I have an entire episode on this podcast. It was a real deep dive into

caffeine recently. And the one thing I can say from my now three months off of coffee

itself is that my new life with a little bit of cacao powder in my morning supplements

and one green tea in the morning has radically shifted my life. And flow states are now easier

to achieve with less caffeine than it was before. My previous lifestyle was one of 400

to 500 milligrams of caffeine per day. Way, way too much. And so the problem there was

I thought that more caffeine would lead to a better flow state, more energy, more work

getting done. But flow is not actually about energy. It's not about psychotic energy that

I was getting because I was so jacked up. Being really jacked up is not the emotion,

not the feeling, not the mindset. That was the wrong approach. But of course, I had an

addiction to the caffeine, so I thought that I was in this great, awesome state when in

reality, I was not. A much calmer, lower dose caffeine state has actually allowed me to

achieve flow more consistently, go deeper into the work, get more value from that work,

not have a crazy crash afterwards, not have that addiction, and be very chill and yet

still wildly productive. And honestly, more fulfilled in the process. It's better. It's

better all around. And so I may go into a more deep dive on that topic later, but let's

just say if you want a flow state, if you want to go deep, if you want to find your

system, make the hard work easier, that process of a reduction in caffeine, that's fantastic.

It just works so well. Next piece to this puzzle. I want to discuss how to overcome

fears because a large part of avoiding hard work is based on fear. If you ask the question,

like, why did you procrastinate on this one certain goal? Why did you put off saving for

retirement? Why did you put off losing weight? Why did you avoid doing all this hard work

to build your business and help your life? Like why? Almost always the answer is fear

and the process to reduce that fear, to face that fear head on and truly tackle it generally

is through repeated exposure, right? Exposing yourself to a small dose of the fear, little

bit at a time over time, and then eventually be able to say that thing that used to frighten

me no longer does. That thing that I avoided no longer feels like a procrastination technique

and now feels the opposite. I really want to work on it, which is a fantastic transformation

process to go through. You know, one of the most effective strategies to doing hard work

is to do your very best to make that work easy. And to rephrase that, we often think

that something is difficult because it actually is, because we don't yet have the skill set

to do it well or fast or both. The skill set is the connection that makes the hard work

easier. And oftentimes you're afraid of doing something, not because it is hard, but because

you don't have the skill set to make it easy for you. That's what I've experienced recently

in this whole investing project and the previous house project where I redid my entire house.

Everything that I've done the last year has been about skill development for me. And the

more that my skills improve, the less scary things are, the more ability I have to face

these things head on, tackle them, get the result that I want and move on to the next

thing and use the same strategy for whatever the next goal happens to be.

Years ago, I read a story about Anthony Hopkins, the famous actor who played Hannibal Lecter.

And Anthony was famous for his performances for a few reasons. The obvious first one,

his natural talent and incredible ability to connect to a character on screen. But really

the true story was his ridiculous work ethic. So he would memorize not only his lines, but

the lines of every other actor in the performance, which is sometimes common, but he would then

rehearse his own lines a minimum of 250 times. He would complete so many repetitions that

every syllable of every word was buried in his brain so far that he'd be able to jump

in and perform at the drop of a hat 24/7 anywhere in that script.

Now, as a guy myself who majored in theater in college and has been in dozens of productions,

I can say from experience that this work ethic is truly remarkable. No one does this at this

level. So what Anthony was able to achieve is something that every actor actually hopes

for. He was able to get to a place of play, what I call playtime when it comes to performance.

So in this context, playtime means that because you have already memorized the lines and the

blocking so well that you can now just play around with the script and your performance.

So it means you can get experimental. You can try new things, get goofy, think outside

the box and put yourself in a position to deliver not just a great performance, but

truly the best performance possible.

Now during my senior year in college, I directed a short play as part of my own capstone project.

And about a week before the big performance, I decided to try something I had only ever

done in acting classes. So I directed my actors to think outside the box during one of these

very final rehearsals. And after going through the entire play, we spent a few minutes getting

goofy, like really weird. We ran through acting games and tried strange accents. And then

I asked them to rehearse the entire play again, but this time taking on the persona of just

being weird, be strange, be goofy. There are no rules. Say your lines from a whole new

perspective, using a new accent, singing your lines, get loud, get quiet, be over the top

or very subdued, whatever it takes.

Now after this very funny and strange rehearsal, we then ran through the entire play one more

time, but this time we leveraged that same energy and creativity while doing everything

else seemingly as normal. And the result was massive creative breakthroughs, incredible

energy, and without a doubt, the best performance that I had seen them do.

And then of course you fast forward about a week when it came to the big day, the big

performance and they nailed it. Their characters were fully developed. They were interesting.

They were full of life. They knew their lines and their blocking, of course. So all they

needed was some fresh energy and creativity and an opportunity to break out of their shells

and do something different.

I was considering recording an episode of this podcast called "Rehearse it until you

hate it." And I thought that that was a little bit dark, a little bit angry, but also that

kind of speaks to what we're talking about. We're talking about doing something that is

based in repetition because repetition breeds success. And when you get yourself to that

position where you know your lines, you know, you're blocking, you know, the script of whatever

it is you're working on, you've done it so many times, it's old hat.

Well, you can make the uncomfortable comfortable by doing this thing so many times, you take

something you were scared of, something you were afraid of doing, whatever it was, it

was your apprehension, your bottleneck, your block. You break that by doing whatever the

work is over and over and over again.

If there is something you don't want to do and you commit to doing it over and over and

over again, you're going to naturally increase your skill set and potentially fall in love

with the simple act of doing this thing over and over that you're now very familiar with.

We tend to like things we understand. We tend to fall in love with people and processes

and systems and work that we are familiar with. And we tend to be scared of those who

we do not know yet. Whether that's people or work or systems, familiarity breeds love.

And that's the point of this process. You can use this in relationships, you can use

this in your work, you can use this in politics if I dare go there. The more people that you

actually get to know personally, the more you learn to love them and understand them.

The same is true for the thing you're scared of. The more you gain the skill set and the

knowledge behind it, all of a sudden it's not weird anymore. It's not scary. It's very

familiar. It's very comfortable. And then you can just step in, do your thing and move

forward.

So in your quest to ultimately fall in love with something you have to do but just never

want to do, I would encourage you to embrace a self-discovery process. So self-discovery

is the process of finding out how you were meant to live and experience the world around

you. What if you simply leaned into that process for yourself instead of trying to run away?

What if you explored, got curious, asked questions instead of hiding or retreating to a safe

space or turning down opportunities because you're trying to avoid doing something that

sounds difficult?

Asking "what if" is a very powerful method to break out of your shell by leaning into

the best possible version of you that you have not yet explored. What if you tried that

project in a new way? What if you just sat down for 10 minutes and did the work? What

if you stopped making excuses, got up early, did that thing, ate that frog and moved on?

What if allows you to think creatively? It allows you to ask the question "how?"

So "what if" is a great starting point. What if I did the work? What if I allowed

myself to go there? And then the secondary piece is, well then how would I go about making

that possible? What would it take to?

And then all of a sudden you begin to brainstorm ideas and think creatively and answer these

questions and whatever it is you're struggling with, all of a sudden has legs. It has potential

and has something concrete to think about and to work on. And that's the process we're

going for is asking that simple question "how do you take yourself from where you are now

into a new place where you actually love the work?"

And there are so many different angles you can take here, but ultimately it's that personal

self-discovery connection of you and the system that speaks to you. That angle, that perspective,

that drive that says "oh, I get it now. This is how I'm going to approach whatever this

new thing is." And all of a sudden, once you know that connection, you get all the ideas,

you write them all down and off to work you go.

It works just like that for every single project, regardless of what it is you're trying to

do. You need the connection, but you got to find it. And you're going to find it by doing

the work.

So for a quick recap, to do the work you don't want to do, remember it's gradually and then

suddenly for that compound effect. Begin with baby steps and then scale to huge success

down the road. Also, motivation follows action. So you're not going to feel like doing the

work at first. You have to actually do some of the work to get the motivation and drive

afterwards. And the simple answer to all of this process is just work.

Now of course, do work you don't want to do by finding your angle, working to achieve

your flow state, and if necessary, leverage a bit of caffeine to achieve possibly a delusional

sense of purpose, which I phrase I love and stole from a YouTuber. Also overcome your

fears through repeated exposure because repetition breeds success. If you have to, rehearse it

until you hate it, or at least until you get some creative breakthroughs and make it a

lot more fun. And then finally embrace self-discovery. Ask yourself, what if each time you catch

yourself trying to run and hide? Because that's not the answer.

Remember that motivation follows action and you may not want to do it until you have been

doing it. You may not know step 3 until you've already finished steps 1 and 2. So lean in,

choose action over fear and get in the game. That's always how every success is won and

how you are going to do the thing you know needs to get done.

Now your next action is to subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app or go

to 5ammiraclepremium.com for the VIP ad-free experience.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5ammiracle podcast this week. Until next time, you have

the power to change your life and all that fun begins bright and early.

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