Welcome to the third lesson of Self-Learning Quest!

You continue your journey through the Dessert Wastelands until you reach the Coral Dolphin Coast.

Dolphins jump in and out of the water like little kids playing in a sandbox. A bajillion different corals form a water rainbow glistening in the midday sun. On a small rock in the middle of the coast, you hear the siren song of the notorious Seraphina, Queen Of The Reef.

Legend has it her music lures everyone but the most motivated travelers away from their path. As you listen, you think about how nice it would be to rest your weary legs, and bask in the sunlight for a while. You're only halfway through your journey--there's so much left to do...

No. You have to find The Key Of Learning. Reaching deep inside yourself, you struggle to find the motivation to continue on.

To ignore this foe and travel on, you must read through the lesson and complete the action items.

Todays Challenge: Figure Out How To Navigate The Grind

"Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting." - Napoleon Bonaparte, The Civilization Series

On the path toward any goal, there is a hardest moment.

A time where motivation is lowest, effort is highest, and you don’t know how in goodness gracious you’re going to make it out. It’s during this moment where you’re most likely to stop and procrastinate. Feelings of doubt and insecurity creep in. But it’s also at this time when you’re closest to the outsized benefits of sticking through.

I call this moment hitting the grind.

Grinding is commonplace in video games. One of my favorite examples is Terraria, which you can replace with any RPG you have played.

Over the summer of 2020, I played Terraria every day for HOURS with my friend Alejandro. Large chunks of this time were spent grinding for better armor, weapons, or tools to make it to the next level. We killed bosses we’d already fought--like The Eye of Cthulhu--mined for ore (while listening to bad Minecraft Parodies), and crafted potions.

Each grind made us powerful enough to kill the next boss and reach a new degree of power.

In real life, many goal pursuits and skill improvements look like this.

The difference is in real life, we often succumb to the grind and give up. Video games, therefore, have tons of insight into how to stick through the grind.

5 Insights From Video Games On How To Stick Through The Grind

Let’s apply the video game insights to the grind I’m currently in, cutting to 165 pounds.

Everyone has had the experience of starting a diet, getting put in front of some of grandma’s cooking, and then taking a "break" for, say, the rest of your life. Dieting is hard. This makes it the perfect project to apply our motivational insights to.

Insight 1: Remind Yourself Why You Started

I’m getting dinner at one of my best friends Joaquin’s Christian Union.

I don’t know what we’re eating, but I’m hoping it’s something with a decent amount of protein. I don’t want to eat something too high in carbs or fat because it will screw up my diet. I look at the table. Chicken pot pie… One of the highest-carb dinners you can have.

I gulp. It smells incredible. Scents of thyme-seasoned chicken, buttered biscuits, carrots, peas, and, dare I say, love, float to my nose. Small pieces of melted butter form culinary hot springs on top of the bisciuts. Joaquin and his fellow Christians laugh at some joke I didn't hear as they begin to serve themselves.

My turn comes.

It’s moments like these where following our goals is incredibly hard. Luckily, video games give us our first insight into sticking through the grind: remind yourself why you started. RPG games, for example, sport a quest log that breaks down larger, more meaningful goals into individual projects and tasks; a helpful reminder when we lose sight of what we should be doing.

When I began my cut, I wrote out a list of reasons why I wanted to cut in the first place:

• I want to improve in my resistance training again through regular bulking, maintenance, and cutting periods.
• I'm trying to improve my relationship with food. I've avoided this type of dieting ever since I I lost 30 pounds in three months on a toxic anabolic diet during COVID-19. I want to have a relationship with food where I can lose weight sustainably.
• Of course, I want to look more attractive (can you blame me?).

While standing in front of that chicken pot pie, I reminded myself of all of these reasons. It was hard. I wanted so bad to enter a food coma. But knowing my future self would be grateful, I took a modest amount rather than the whole dang platter.

Insight 2: Be Mindful Of The Middle

The hardest part of most goal pursuits is the middle because you don’t have the inspiration from starting something new nor the excitement of being close to finishing. As of writing, I’m in the middle portion of my cut right now.

Many video games get players through this period by being mindful of the middle. They might lower the difficulty setting, give players more rewards than usual, throw in a surprise, etc.

In real life, we can anticipate when we will hit the grind and prepare for it. I’m being mindful of the middle by having it occur at my parent’s house. There’s something you should know about my parents: they’re health nuts.

While I’m there, processed food becomes an endangered species. They eat salad like it’s oxygen. They consider dark chocolate their “cheat dessert.” My mom exercises so much she thinks a 5k is a "warmup" for her real workout.

Why is this helpful?

I figure if I’m surrounded by people with health standards this high, I could act like them 1/2 the time and still make my cutting goals. My demotivation one day would turn to inspiration as I spot my mom exercising in the basement before most people are even up.

Insight 3: Grind With Others

Many video games get us through the grind by encouraging us to do it with others. Alejandro and I got through many of our Terraria grinds because we had each other.

I’m doing the same thing in real life by cutting with my brother. Every time we call, we bond over our experiences. My brother struggles with binge eating, so he always has the funniest stories. Once, he called me and said, “Aidan, why do they put nuts in such large jars?”

Another time, he told me he was taking a break from cutting, and when I asked him why, he said, “I’m visiting grandma.” He’s been cutting for three months (much too long by the way) because he’ll do fantastic for two weeks, and than eat 5,000-7,000 calories in a meal, setting himself back a week or two of progress.

Connecting over funny stories like this has been invaluable in getting through the tougher moments of my cut.

Insight 4: Focus On A Different Skill Or Goal

Many video games include main quests as well as side quests. If I’ve been pursuing the main quest for too long or it’s getting too hard, I like taking a break with some side quests. In Terraria, this often means building ugly structures. When I’m refreshed, I go back to the main quest.

In real life, we can recharge for our main quest by focusing on a different skill or goal.

I’m doing this on my cut by improving my pixel art drawing at the same time. I recently got an iPad Air and have been having way too much fun learning to draw pixel art for my articles and YouTube videos. Here’s an image of me holding the best food on this planet–peanut butter:

And of some Terraria-like weapons I drew to honor my love for the game:

And here’s some food:

I realize this probably wasn’t the best thing to draw, considering the goal I’ve been talking about. Regardless, drawing pixel art in my cut’s tough moments has been invaluable in helping me recharge when I need a break.

Insight 5: Stop Relying On Motivation

This last insight is a catch-22 because video games don’t do this well.

We play video games because they are inherently fun. Motivation isn’t usually a problem. But there are times in real life when, no matter what we do, we won’t be able to find motivation.

There is only one thing to do when this happens: act anyways.

Action creates motivation. There have been so many times where I haven’t felt like doing something, told myself I would do it for five minutes, and then got myself to do it. Action without motivation can come from three main sources:

1. Discipline

2. Passion

3. Habits

Discipline

Unlike many people believe, discipline is a skill, not a genetic inherency. It’s a limiting belief to say, “I’m not disciplined.” It’s more accurate to say, “I’m not disciplined, yet.” In my cutting, there have been many times I don’t feel like sticking to the plan, and I simply say, “tough luck, your doing it anyways.”

Building discipline is simple but not easy. All you must do is push through things you don't want to. Start small and build up. If you can get yourself to do the easy things you don't want to, you'll be ready for the harder things when they come up.

Passion

Passion is the main thing that fuels my cutting. I wouldn’t exactly describe cutting as rainbows and candycanes. The lowered energy, the nights out with friends, the craving to consume an entire Chips Ahoy Establishment. What gets me through these moments is the love for the art of resistance training in itself. I love it so much I can respect, even enjoy in a sick, demented way, the more difficult aspects of it like cutting.

Just like discipline, passion is often built rather than innate. The act of getting better at something over time is often enough to build passion for it. But what builds it even more is building intrinsic motivation for the thing through developing autonomy, mastery, and purpose talked about in Daniel H Pink's Drive.

Habits

Finally habits help me on my cutting by making many good choices unconscious. The more decisions I don't need to deliberate on, the easier it will be for me to do my cut. When should I eat? What should I eat? How should I train? Questions like these are all habits for me.

Building habits could be an entire course in itself. But for those interested in learning more, I highly recommend checking out James Clear's Atomic Habits.

Now it’s your turn. If you can apply even one of these insights, I’m confident you will be significantly more likely to make it through the grind and reap the outsized reward in your self-learning quest. Who knows, there might be diamonds on the other side.

🎯Take Action Today

• Choose one or two of the insights above that resonate most with you and journal or talk with someone about how you can integrate them into your self-learning quest.

You summon up every ounce of motivation you can find and manage to pull yourself from Seraphina’s mesmerizing song. How? By thinking of puppies of course!

Smiling, you continue your way on your path, confident you can continue to tap into that motivation throughout your journey.

If you're ready for the next lesson before waiting until tomorrow you can always access all lessons by clicking here.