Here's How To Keep Going When It Gets Hard

Most people do not fail because they are incapable, they fail because quitting is easier than staying consistent when life gets loud. I recently had a setback: my car gets broken into and I lost my laptop, hard drive, and all my recorded music for my hip-hop musical. It hurts, but let's talk about how we can use moments like this for good. Too many times we let our brains talk us out of continuing. Let's talk about HOW TO KEEP GOING WHEN IT GETS HARD.

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Transcript

Opening Track Chasing Goals

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Losing myself and finding my strength came to the conclusion that I want it all. Feeling that pressure of tryna do better. I wanna reach heights, but too scared to fall. Too scared of failure. Way more scared of feeling regret. I'm not even trying, that's terrifying. I understand that chasing my goals, I bury my clocks because it takes time. I gotta go. I already know. If I wanna grow, you read what you stole. That be the case. Planting my seeds or water my base. Yeah, I made mistakes. Yeah, I know you grow in your garden, but watch for the snakes. The people that act like you're crazy, but trying this, they fall away. They don't think it's possible, I think it's possible. That is just hate. If they hate themselves, cause they on the shelf. Why you create? A life that you love. A life that you love. Loving the fact you improving yourself. Decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it. The road got bumping, you're putting a pedal. You go up a level, you turn up whenever it's time for you to go put in that work. I know my work, huh? I know it ain't gonna be easy, yeah. I know it hurts, but thing is for sure. Yeah. Until it put me in this earth. Before I ride in that hurts, testing the goals.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Chasing my goals. Loving the facts to improving yourself. Decided that you in the better. Decided that you got the drive to do it to go. Got more cutter. I'm testing my goals.

Welcome Reviews And Support Links

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Alright, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all so much for being here. If you are on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel. If you are listening to me on a podcast platform, please leave me a review. Those things help me keep this thing going. Also, please support the channel. I left a link in the description for you to do that. Um, anything will be greatly appreciated. Like I said, you can buy your boy a cup of coffee. I love coffee, I drink it every day, and I need some, especially today, because I am tired, but I'm still gonna get on here and do this thing for y'all.

Laptop Stolen And Starting Over

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Um, if you notice, uh, I have been kind of MIA for the past few weeks. Uh, unfortunately, uh my car had got broken into, and they stole my laptop and my hard drive. So I'm kind of starting from scratch, and this has been a long year so far. So uh, but you know, I got through that, I'm pushing through that. Um, I'm still able to do this, and I'm still working and still working towards all the things that I've been working on and working towards. Did it hurt? Hell to the yes. The thing that hurt the most, as most of y'all know, or if you've been listening, you've been knowing I've been working on this hip-hop musical, and although I still have all the text and everything that I've written that I wrote, because I have all the documents on um Google Docs, I think it's called that, yeah, online. But all that music that I have recorded, all the vocals that I laid down, that's all gone. So I gotta start from scratch. But again, it's still gonna work out because I do still have all the instrumentals that I have purchased. It's just I have to go back in and redo it all, remix it and produce it. Uh, but you know, it's kind of a blessing in disguise, a gift and a curse, because this is gonna force me. Well, not gonna force me, what I was doing before was I was just putting it together just so I can be able to hear it myself, so that way I can be able to teach it or play it for folks to be able to hear what direction I'm going in. But I was kind of halfway doing it as far as truly putting all the instrumentals together in a way that a sound engineer or um a sound designer can pick up and be able to work with. This way I'm going back and I'm doing it the correct way. So now when somebody does pick pick it, pick it up and get into the programming of it all, it'll be a whole lot easier and they could just hit the ground running even smoother. So a blessing of the skies, gifting a curse. I'm uh choosing to see the glass half full, right? Life is about what happens to you and how you respond to it. So I'm responding in a way that's gonna keep me motivated and keep me uh looking at the brighter side of things. But let's go ahead and get started with this episode. I

Stop Giving Up On Yourself

SPEAKER_01 4:20

was kind of a sidebar, I just went on. But today we're gonna talk about how to push through when it gets tough, when things get hard. We're gonna talk about how to stop giving up, in particular, how to stop giving up on yourself. The one person you need to really be following through for. That's yourself. And unfortunately, it's the person we tend to not follow through for the most. We all do it, we all the men that done that. Today I'm gonna give you three tips that's gonna help you to push through, to keep going when you have those moments when you feel like giving up. Because so many times we start something and then we stop. We start this thing, then we start, then we stop this thing that we started, then we start another thing, a new thing, and we stop. And if you started something, whatever that thing is, a business, a health goal, a project, an idea you had, if you started something, you went into it with the intention of finishing it. You thought to yourself that whatever that thing was, if you do it, it'll make life better for you or other people in your life in some kind of way. You started with the intention of finishing it. You didn't start with the intention to start it and then leave it alone and never complete it. So the question is, why did you give up? Why did you quit? And the answer is easy. It's because that's exactly what it is. Easy. It's easy to give up. It's easy to quit. It's the easiest thing to do. It don't require anything from you. You just stopped doing it. It ain't that we stopped caring about it. We just took the easy route and stopped. And I want you to think about it like this. If

Why Quitting Feels So Easy

SPEAKER_01 5:53

you never stopped that thing you started, if you never gave up, if you stayed locked in on finishing it, imagine where you could be right now. Right now, how different things could be. That business, that project, that career, that move, how different would your life be right now? Right? But what happens is things get hard, it gets difficult, and then we give up. We don't have the energy for it, we don't feel like doing it because it becomes inconvenient. And the thing is, the thing we all know is no great life is built the easy way. When you think about the folks who you admire the most, excuse me, the people who you wish you had, the kind of life they had, they usually have been through a lot. Or they had to bust their ass to get it, or a combination of both, right? They had a hard path. And you don't listen to this kind of podcast if you want to take the easy route. You know that you want your life to be different. You know that you want to be the kind of person who takes your path in your own hands, who takes control for yourself. You want to get better at taking action, you want to work on yourself to create a life that you want in the future. And you have heard me say this plenty of times on this podcast before, but your life can either be hard now and easy later, or easy now and hard later. Life will be hard at some point for you. You can either choose to make it hard now or choose to make it hard later.

Hard Now Or Hard Later

SPEAKER_01 7:15

For example, let's say you are a person who collects old cars and fixes them up. And let's say you find one of your favorite cars and you got it out of the garage, or you got it in the garage, and you have a lot of work to do on it to get it ready to drive and to get it all finished and looking pretty. But the only time you have to work on it is after work or on the weekends when you don't really feel like doing it. You just got home from work, it's the weekend, or your day off, and you just mentally don't want to deal with this car right now. Well, it's easy to say, to say that, right, that you don't feel like it and not work on it. It's easy to have your day off and do nothing or something else that's not work. That's real easy. That's easy now. But the hard later, well, all this time goes by and you never actually work on it, and it's just sitting in the garage, taking up space, collecting dust, right? It's in the way, and eventually you gotta just get rid of it because you know realistically you ain't never gonna finish it. It's been years since you even thought about working on that car. Now that dream you had of pulling out this beautiful car on that Saturday night or at that car show, that dream is over. Now you gotta get this thing gone, right? That's the hard later. And a very um low-stakes example, right? But still, think about what that does to your confidence when it comes to you taking on other projects or hobbies in the future, right? Just having any kind of discipline at all. That's hard. So which one do you choose? And again, you're the kind of person who listened to this podcast. You've taken the hard route plenty of times so you can be able to have it easy later. And I know you can look back at you can look around at people in your life that you know, and you can see how they took the easy route back then. And you can see how it's manifesting in their life right now. You can see how it's harder on them right now. It's easy to take the easy route early in life, right? And right around now is when folks start to feel it. They don't necessarily like where life is for them right now. And we really at that point when we need to be making decisions for our lives down the road. We ain't in our teens and our 20s no more, right? And

Turning 40 And Time Pressure

SPEAKER_01 9:26

I don't know if you heard or not, but um, your boy just turned 40 years old. I'm in the 40 for the club. I'm old now, right? I got a single gray hair in my beard. I lost my keys the other day. I think my back hurting right now. It's all down here from now. Joking, I feel great. Uh but if you know me, then you know I'm as active as ever, right? I'm in a kickball league, a softball league. I jog around the lake at least once a week. That's about two miles. I go hiking, I have a yacht, aka a powder boat. But it's a yacht, right? But we just don't have, and my point is, my point is I feel great. But what I was saying is we don't have time to mess around no more, right? Life can be hard now, putting in the work, making the sacrifices, making sure that it'll be easier in the future. Or, and it can be easy now, doing nothing, quitting, giving up, not taking action, and hard hits you later. Hard almost always hits you later. And usually when it's hard later, it's a different kind of hard, right? Making a sacrifice right now is hard, like going to school, staying up late to study for an exam, writing long essays, deciding not to go to that party because you know you have homework to do. That's the hard now while you were in school. But the hard later, if you decided to take the easy route and not do that stuff, well, the hard is way different. Maybe you don't have the job you want, maybe you have a bunch of student loans with no degree to actually show for it, or you flunked out, you work in the minimum wage job and you feel stuck in life. That's a way different kind of hard, and it's gonna take a longer time to get out of that hard. The type of hard that comes from taking the easy route, when that hard does come, it lasts, and sometimes for the rest of your life. Think about your health and the way you eat and exercise. That easy route will show up later in life. So which one do you choose? Right now, you are the youngest you'll ever be again. Let me say that again for the folks in the back. You are the youngest you'll ever be, ever again. So we can sit here and say, Oh, I wish I would have done that thing five years ago. Well, you didn't. But guess what? Do it now. The best time to do it was back then. The second best time is right now. You can't go back. You can't go back and decide you want to be healthy or that you want to have a better mindset or that you want to become more disciplined or more resilient or to work on that relationship with your family member. You can't go back. But you can do it right now. You can do it tomorrow. You can choose the hard right now and make it easier down the road for you. So let's get to it. I'm gonna give you three tips to help you push through, to help you keep going when it gets tough. And number

Tip 1 Train For Hard

SPEAKER_01 12:16

one is to train yourself for what's hard. The more you learn to push past those mental barriers, the easier it becomes to continue to do it in other areas of life. It's always you versus you. And the you that you're going against, it's the you inside your head, talking you out of everything, trying to make you sit around and do nothing, wanting you to eat them Oreos instead of eating something healthy, to spend your whole day watching Netflix or looking at TikTok instead of working on that thing you need to work on. That feeling that's telling you that it's too hard, that you should just quit, that you might not, that you might not even be able to do it. Just like with me at my laptop and my hard drive. I really grieved over that. It was hard. But I also understood that, yeah, I could let this make me be like, well, damn, I lost all that music. Damn, I lost all that video work. I lost all the songs I recorded for this hip-hop musical. And I could have let that have me depressed and just pushed it to the side because not only that, but this has just been a just a hard long year in general, especially financially. This economy had been hard on me. And I'm talking about hard. This gotta be the brokest out of been in a very, very long time. The work just ain't been there for me. It is now, thank God. But add me being fine, add my financial struggles on top of all my stuff getting stolen, I could have easily let this thing just be on a back burner and just quit. Or tell myself, I'm gonna do it next month. And then let that next month turn into next month, and so on and so on until a year goes by and I still ain't working on it. But instead, I brushed myself off, I prayed about it, I let myself have the human emotions that I was feeling. I was sad, depressed, and hurt, and I released it and I'm back on it. And now I already finished all the instrumentals I lost. Now I just gotta record my vocal or re-record my vocals. And in reality, like I said, it was a blessing in disguise because before I was just putting the instrumentals together in a way that was only convenient for me, but I just needed to hear it out loud. So it wasn't done in a way that was um that that an actual sound designer will be able to jump in on the software and easily work with it. And that's really hard to explain. Uh, hopefully you that makes sense. But now I'm doing it the right way, or I did it the right way, which took longer up front. It was hard now, but the easy later, when the musical does get produced, it's gonna be a way smoother process with the digital audio and the instrumentals and all that. So I'm glad I did that. Anyway, like I was saying, it's you versus you. You versus that voice that tells you to just do it tomorrow, that it ain't a big deal. And that goes for any and everything in life. One of the things that I'm getting better at, actually a whole lot better at, is the little things, right? Things that take less than five minutes to do. As soon as they come up, I just do it. If it's gonna take five minutes or less, I try to just do it right now. Now, that's of course if I'm not working on something currently at the same time, right? But that inner voice, that inner voice be telling you that you can do it later, that you can do it in an hour, that you can do it when you get home. But if I allow that inner voice to continue to win, it's only gonna get stronger. It's only gonna make it that much harder to push back against it when you have more important things to do. If I can't overcome that inner voice right now, if I don't train myself right now with the little things, how am I gonna be equipped to mentally push through when the stakes are higher, right? When it's more important and that task is gonna take way longer than five minutes, when it's gonna take an hour. You can imagine how much stronger that little voice is gonna be inside of you, right? And unfortunately, the thing is, this thing is never gonna go away. It's always gonna be there. It's just part of human nature. But the more you can train yourself to fight against it, the better you'll be at it, at fighting against it. This that that mental gym you need to be a member of. That voice is gonna tell you not to go to the gym, not to make those cold calls if you have a sales job, right? To put off sending those emails, right? To hit that snooze button four times, staying up late when you know you need to go to bed. So many times we let that little voice win, but we need to push back. And the more you do it, the stronger you'll be at it. So that's number one. Train yourself for what's hard. It's you versus you. Figure out how you can push through. And that brings me to our next one. Number

Tip 2 Consistency Beats Feelings

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two, do what needs to be done regardless of how you feel, aka stay consistent, focus on having that consistent effort. Success, it don't happen right away. It just takes time. It will not come tomorrow, it won't happen instantly. But if we can just stay consistent, if we can just keep walking the path of self-development, if we can just keep working on chipping away at those goals, if we can just keep making strides, taking steps, eventually we will be where we want to be. And the key is to work at it regardless of how you feel. Lately I've been telling myself, facts over feelings, facts over feelings. I was feeling down about not having my music. I was sad, it hurt, but I had to look at the facts. I still had all that text from the script and the music, right? It's all on Google Docs that lives online, and I still had all the instrumentals that I purchased. Now, was it gonna be a lot of work to engineer them again and put it all together and redo it all? Hell yes. But the fact is, I did it once, and I could do it again. I was feeling sad and down, but the facts were that I had everything I needed. And so, whatever that thing is you're working towards, it ain't easy. I know it ain't easy. It ain't supposed to be easy. If it was easy, it wouldn't be something you would be working towards because it would have been done already. Everybody would have did it. And if it and if it's not easy, that means it's challenging. And challenging things will bring lots of those days when your mind and your body will try and give you all the reasons why you don't want to do it right now. All the excuses in the world as to why you don't feel like it. And we know those feelings just sometimes feel justified, right? Like right now, it's a day off. I could be doing a million other things. I'm feeling lazy, I'm kind of tired. I wish I could just sit down, look at my phone, or watch TV, but here I am doing what needs to be done, regardless of how I feel. Because I know eventually, the more I build up this muscle, this habit of putting in work and resisting the urge to do something else, when I do get to that level I'm striving for, like I said, the stakes are gonna be higher. And like I said, that inner voice, it never goes away. So it's gonna be there. But if I'm starting now, doing what needs to be done, regardless of how I feel, when I eventually get to that point, whenever or wherever it may be, whatever that thing I happen to be working on, it'll be easier to just give my ass up and do it. We have to be consistent. And the days you don't feel like doing it are actually the most important days. Because they are, right? You if you if you can do it when you don't feel like it and you still get it done, that's how you build momentum. That's how that momentum starts to pop up now. Now you feel like doing it, now you're feeling motivated. Doing what you said you were gonna do, even though you don't feel like doing it, it builds confidence inside you because you are showing up for yourself. And by making a habit of that, when you go after another goal or tackle another project, you're gonna have a stronger belief in yourself that you can actually get it done. There ain't gonna be no doubt in your mind. And that doubt is not always a conscious thing. Sometimes it just sits in the back of your mind, and sometimes you don't even start that thing, right? Let alone quit it. It won't seem like there's something that's even possible to get done. So get past that mental barrier. Don't wait for the motivation. Like I always say, motivation is constantly fleeting. You have less and less of it from the time you start it or the time you get it until it's gone. It always leaves 100% of the time. Motivation leaves 100% of the time. And studies show that the most of your motivation actually comes from when you are already doing something, not when you're sitting around hoping it comes to you. No, it comes from the action you take. That action actually gives you the motivation the majority of the time. It comes after you actually start. So take action today. That's what matters the most. So that's number two. Do what needs to be done, regardless of how you feel.

Tip 3 Find A Deeper Why

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And three, and I say this all the time, but have a strong enough why. Why you're going after that thing, why you doing it in the first place. Wanting to make more money is not a strong enough why. Wanting to have a beach body is not a strong enough why. Wanting to be good at something ain't strong enough. It's not a strong enough why. If you want to build your own business because you want more money and that's it, you gotta dig deeper. Why do you want more money? So you can live better? Why? Dig deeper. So life can be easier? Why dig deeper? So you can provide for your kids and give them all the things that you never had when you were a child. Deeper. Why? Because you want to be a good role model for your kids so they can see you working towards something, and when they get older, they'll have that same thing instilled in them and hopefully pass it down to their kids, and your family will be a successful family and be better off than they have been in the past. Ain't that a better why? Better than I wanna make more money? Which one of those do you think is gonna give you or is gonna get you out of bed on those days that you feel like hitting that snooze button 15 times? When you set a goal, set your why, a deep one. One that's deep, one that's gonna be deep down inside you as to why you are going for that thing. And why? Well, when your why is strong enough, the how will always reveal itself. When your why is strong enough, the how will reveal itself. It's hard as hell to be driven and consistent as it is, and it's that much harder when you don't have a strong enough why. If your why is to make more money, that can be that can mean anything. You can win the lottery, you can gamble, you can sell Bitcoin, you can have a garage sale, you can do OnlyFans, you can be a YouTuber, you can do so many things. But if you want to be a good role model for your kids, so they can instill it in their kids, and to have that success and that drive passed down from generation to generation, well that's a very specific thing. Right? That's a very specific thing and thought process that you need to have mentally, and a very specific person you have to become. That's a big difference. So when you have those moments, those days you don't feel like putting in the work, remember your why. Allow that to help push you, to help you keep taking those steps, to help you keep going, to get you to your breakthrough. So that's what I got for y'all today.

The 92% Trap And Closing

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Uh, really straightforward, but very important. And we're all gonna end up here again in this mental slash emotional space where it's just hard to take action right now. It's just hard to find that motivation, to find that momentum. But we have to expect that there are gonna be days like this. What you're working towards and striving for, it ain't easy. And this pushback that we are feeling is actually normal. How normal is it? I'm glad you asked. It's why 92% of people give up on their goals. 92%. And that's from a study from the University of Scranton. Um, so that means that if you want to be a part of that 8% that don't give up on your goals, you have to understand that it's not gonna be easy, and that the biggest hurdle most of the time is your own damn brain. Unfortunately. And it's important to know all of this to help you keep going when it's hard to be able to push through and get to your goals. So that's what I got for y'all today. Again, thank y'all for being here. Please share this episode with a friend or a family member if you think this would help them or share it on social media. Please tag me in it. Uh, make sure you leave a review and subscribe to my channels. Also, become a supporter of the show. I left links in the description to do that. Buy your boy a cup of coffee, it will help me keep this thing going. Let's go ahead and get to this music.

Outro Song Stubborn

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The song got for y'all today. It's an unreleased song, and the song is called Stubborn. Let's ride out. Just watch how you talk to me, it's matter for discussion. Really, probably better off if you just don't say nothing. Call it what you call it, yeah. Okay, so what I'm stuck, uh Call it what you call it, yeah, okay, so what I'm stubbing. Get on my way, uh. I shoot for the moon, ended up turning into a star. Now I'm out of stage. So no, you can't put me in my phase, yeah. How to maze, I spill it like I ain't not liking the taste, uh. We put you so, yeah. Plantin' my seeds and water my base. Uh stay out of my way. No man to calm but you like today. Then we get long, that's all on my stage. Something that started, man. Get a map. Sorry, not sorry, the way that I'm feeling if you do me wrong, I'm catching the case. Something that started, but I do not care about your side of the story. Go have a good day. Something that started. Dream chasing got a nigga sleepy all day. We had way too many bad days. You can see it all in my face. All in that stress and on top of depression, but I don't say nothing. Let him keep guessing. That's why she texting me, are you okay? I said I'm good, are you on the way? Lay livin' hustlin' faster. It was my goal to pick up the pace. They let's store now, man. They name a brace. I'm like I know I'm in first place. Shit, I ain't really wanna shine, uh Wanna get bread, but don't wanna grind. That sound like death, uh my only regret was wasting my time, uh. My second regret was being so stubborn. My two favorite words is fuck it. I ain't wanna all that fuss. No, I ain't wanna all that. Just watch how you talk to me. It's kinda for discussion. Really probably better off if you just don't say nothing. All in what you call it, yeah, okay. So what I'm stubborn. All it what you call it, yeah, okay. So what I'm stubborn. Shut up when you talk to me, shut up when you talk to me. I don't wanna hear your mom for see your face. I don't need your help anyway. Believe I will be straight. I put it all on my plate, get it done in plenty ways, plenty days. I'm outdoing them niggas, but I keep it cool. I don't need to flex. You ain't a threat. I'm humble, so all I require from you is respect. Puts on my chest. That's how I play my cards, get off my deck. Sheep that me, you too closed out. I see you sound like my ex, not a disc. I'm learning some things about me. Now I need to check, but I need some sex. Let's talk about me later. I need some rest, I am the best. And devoted and expressing my feelings, protecting my feelings, especially when it's this time of my life and I'm working on me. And this God is my witness. I'm working to death. Uh, let me slow down. Throwin' the tiles, type. Wait on me to say I'm starving first. Yikes Look, my nigga, I'm good. I swear I don't need your advice. Yep, I'm all right. Yeah. Just watch how you talk to me, it's matter for discussion. Really probably better off if you just don't say nothing. Call it what you call it, yeah. Okay, so what I'm stuck, uh call it what you call it, yeah, okay, so what I'm stubborn. Get on my way, uh I shoot for the moon, ended up turning into a star. Now I'm out of space, yeah. So no, you can't put me in my face, yeah.