My Points

Ingratitude: Becoming grateful for your life – as it is right now – is the most important thing you can do to productively move forward. It’s easier to work towards making money when you’re grateful for the money that let you eat (read: live) today.

Envy: Envy will make you forget that the only life worth living is your own. Indeed, it’s the only life you will ever live. Envy poisons desire so that we can’t trust it. Envy will focus your energy on being a victim of ‘not having’. Envy will take so much of your attention that you forget to do what’s important.
If your friend scores a win and you cringe, you’re envious of them. If they suffer a loss and you feel relief, you’re envious of them.
When you spend time being envious of people for having more (money, peace, happiness, perspective, intelligence, ‘time’, family, anything) than you then you certainly aren’t focusing on creating more of that into your own life. When you notice your reaction to others you can begin to shift it.
Your other friend who has seen the entire world has you convinced your a loser for not being in all those places.
Understand: Facebook is a highlight reel.
If I’m Envying the life of somebody else then I’m wasting my own.

Impatience: Impatience is what makes us fumble the ball because we’ve already moved on to the next task. It’s what causes us to half-ass work.
If you’re practicing a skill and at a plateau then you will suffer severe Impatience. It will make you doubt everything about your abilities.
Sometimes we get impatient because we’ve been stuck in a task for too long and our brains are getting pissed about it.

Overwhelm: “Nothing is possible and everything must be done”.
Most problems can be fixed by taking something away instead of adding something else.
One of the most universal feelings of our generation is, “I should be doing more.”
If you’re just setting around feeling bad for not having reached your goal then you probably won’t be working hard to get to it.

Inaction: It’s comfortable to get ideas and think about them long enough that it’s exciting to tell people about – then you lose motivation to make that idea a reality. Notice what happens to your motivation when you spend a day not taking action – it’s gone.
Every action you take, no matter how small, will build momentum.
Make it so easy to begin a task that you can’t not do it.
Trick yourself into beginning tasks by making the commitment so miniscule you HAVE to do it.
You don’t need every day to be a big one but you do need to keep the motivation alive by keeping the chain intact.

Loss of meaning: If you feel like what you’re doing has no purpose then you are guaranteed to have zero motivation to do it.
If you’re no longer excited about your work you may be playing too small.
Try bulking up your mission. It may help infuse every little task with a little more meaning.
It may be difficult to express yourself through your work – so find another outlet. Go paint or draw a picture or write a poem. Express yourself in some raw way that gives meaning to your life. It’s easy to forget about art when we’re focused on profits – and it could take a while for you to feel like your craft is actually an art – so sometimes you need to go to art directly.

No skin in the game: The less you need to succeed the less motivated you become to do so.
Earlier I talked about how Quentin Tarantino had to go through eight years of nothing working out for him before he made Reservoir Dogs. He attributes his ability to do this to the fact that he didn’t set up a plan B. Plan A was going to work or he would continue working in movie stores. It had to happen.
So share your deadlines with somebody who will slap you hard if you don’t meet them.
You need to set yourself up so it will hurt to not finish what you said you would.
You need to create an environment that supports action in the direction you want to go.

Poor health: You know your brain works better when it’s well fed, when you work out, and when you sleep well. You know what’s good for you. Respect yourself.