Some fail at the slightest obstacles.
Others can unleash monumental forces.
Most quit the second it gets mildly hard.
Some keep pushing and go, ‘Yes, I love it.’
Some get up every day and change nothing. They don't dwell on giving up; they've already given up. They’ve forgotten they had dreams and now stay precisely where they are.
Others, with seemingly infinite energy, constantly redefine what’s possible. ‘I cannot give up; I cannot fatigue, for my resilience knows no bounds. Every day, I confront life.’
Every lived second matters. I firmly believe that every second is a potential turning point. Every thought, action, and belief carries weight. Some choose to stay in bed, while others opt to confront their biggest fears.
Everyone alive is guaranteed death; everyone’s seconds are countable. Some choose to do something with their time, while others don’t.
I’m here to share how I keep going when no one is watching.
Use silence and solitude to determine what matters and what doesn’t. Stop distracting, entertaining, and busying yourself; deprive yourself of pleasure. Stillness is needed to find the truth. Give your mind time to process everything.
Stare at a wall.
Literally, if you stare at your wall for two hours, you’ll gain clarity and insight.
Reflect on every decision you’ve made. Think of death. Visualize your deathbed. Picture your funeral. Think of the decisions that need to be made.
What would I do if I weren’t scared? What would I do if I couldn’t fail? What’s the biggest thing holding me back? Where do I need to make peace? What’s success? What truth am I avoiding? What makes me feel alive? What do I wish I would have done? What if I had one more year to live? What would I do if no one was watching?
Reflect in solitude to find true motivation.
That’s what rebirth means.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Nietzsche
Never underestimate the power of the mind.
Let’s say you went through hell and fought every day to survive. Others had already given up because they had lost hope, but your will to survive knew no bounds. So, after years of struggle, you made it through. But then, what do you do when nothing waits on the other side, and you’ve exhausted yourself?
A study from 1957 by Curt Richter goes the following: Rats were put in water, and they usually died after a few minutes. Wild rats, who are excellent swimmers, and fighters, gave up even sooner. Then, the same test was conducted with one difference. Shortly before the rats drowned in their water bucket, they were taken out of the water and given time to rest. Then, they were put in the water once more. How long did the rats last for a second time after learning that there’s light at the end of the tunnel? Sixty hours.
Imagine being a pilot and crashing in the middle of the freezing ocean. Now you’ve got only a few minutes before freezing to death. But don’t you think you would survive a bit longer if you knew with absolute certainty that you’d be saved?
If you lose the will to live, it’s over.
Thus, to endure hardship, you need hope. You need to see the light on the other side and know exactly what you want and why you want it. Perseverance, resilience, and discipline are only possible with a clear vision.
How do you gain vision? With meditation in solitude.
I’m willing to give up everything to make my dreams come true.
After you’ve found your why and learned the absolute necessity of hope. We need to set a few things straight.
3.1. Modern life is too easy and void
There’s a sculpture by Michelangelo depicting Mary with her dead son Jesus. It captures what mothers are trying to avoid by all means - seeing their children dead. A mother could try to save their children from the world's dangers, but unfortunately, that’s impossible. The world may kill one’s body, but staying at home is worse; it kills one’s soul.
Life is brutal once you leave your room.
Most men try to live in safety and comfort. The comfort level experienced today is greater than that of past kings. You can go to a supermarket and find more variety of food than any king had at his disposal. Palaces often had neither toilets nor heating. Those who have everything can’t generate enough will to leave their bed. Most have forgotten they used to have dreams. Complacency is the killer of motivation.
Comfort leaves one empty. This void needs to be filled. Why not fill it with entertainment, cynicism, nights out, and anxiety?
What’s real, anyway? The majority of books don’t teach anything. Our job rarely has a real purpose. Most of our friends don’t even like us. Escaping this comfort is no easy task, but it is necessary nonetheless.
Consider the story of Adam and Eve. In the Garden of Eden, they lived in never-ending comfort. However, a comfortable life is meaningless, so they destroyed paradise. – and opened their eyes. Similarly, the Buddha, raised in immense luxury and comfort, rejects it after seeing the suffering outside his palace. He realized that the desire for pleasure is insatiable and a mere illusion. So, he leaves his paradise.
You must go out there and face the world.
3.2. No one cares about the weak
A few months ago, I was on a two-week trip near Barcelona. My mother wanted me to spend time with the son of a woman she befriended. So, I got to know this 19-year-old, and I felt shame. He swam slower than my 8-year-old brother. He tried to talk about movies and video games with me. His posture was that of a question mark. He was such a nice and submissive guy that I may have accidentally insulted him in every sentence.
Then, one day, I told him to stop being weak, and after asking his mother, he agreed to go on a run with me. I wanted to run four kilometers, which takes around twenty minutes. After running for no more than twenty seconds at a speed I almost considered walking, he quit.
I asked him how many girls had a crush on him.
No one cares about the weak.
I don’t care about compassion; if I feel sorry for him, nothing in his life changes, and hot blondes will not start having a crush on him. You may not like it, but this is reality.
He needs momentum to improve. I’ve been in his shoes myself. There used to be a time when I couldn’t do more than five pushups. But I felt enough pain to uproot everything and change.
He could undoubtedly blame his mother for raising him weak-minded. But who cares? Even if his critique were perfectly accurate, he would still be weak. Laziness, pleasure-seeking, and weakness are intrinsically repelling. People are attracted to power.
This is your call to become powerful.
3.3. What my father didn’t teach me
Forget about being special. It takes years of dedication to become special, and even then, being special doesn’t mean you can skip the hard work. There is simply no excuse not to do the tedious, arduous work.
Are you competing against your past self? Comparison is the thief of joy, they say. So, are you competing against your past self or everyone else? Truthfully, no one said they contradict each other. I’m competing against myself as well as everyone else. Life is pure competition. Everything you want, others want.
No one cares about your excuses. “You were probably a bit tired.” “Your teammates messed up, not you.” “It was hot today.” – Except that no one cares about your tiredness. What matters is whether you’ve achieved something or not. Your reasons for failing don’t matter; no one will listen. You either win or lose – the choice is yours. Life is war.
It’s okay to fail. Most people dramatize failures. Recently, I saw the video of my very first judo fight. I fought hard and lost regardless. That happens. Then, the second my fight was over, my mother dragged me from the arena, and the instructor yelled at her to leave. What kind of nonsense is that? Am I not allowed to lose?
Mastery takes a lot more work than you think. Every 11th grader had to write a 10-page paper on a random topic. Some were proud of theirs; they thought they’d done something worth mentioning. Guess what? After I’ve written 150,000+ words, I’m still not a master. There’s no way around putting in the work.
The twenty-hour rule. While mastery requires immense effort, there are shortcuts to becoming proficient. There’s the 20-hour rule. It takes just two focused days to become good at something, which means 80% of a master’s level. For example, learning how to drive takes only twenty hours. Still, you’ll have to put in the work. Most never dare to put in the first hour.
Humility. My little brother goes ice skating every week. However, he uses a metal scaffold to prevent a slip. His fear of making a mistake makes him unable to progress. I learned to ice skate in two hours because I wasn’t scared to slip. Courses where children learn to swim are the biggest nonsense. How do you think I learned to swim? Ultimately, humility and making mistakes are crucial for growth. In life, there isn’t an easy way to learn. Stop hoping for one.
Get used to the taste of life, pain.
There’s never a way around doing the hard work.
We have now discussed where to find one’s why and how purpose gives strength. We have also discussed how life is hard once you leave your room. Now, let’s go a bit further.
4.1. Your parents will get older sooner than you think
Whether you make your parents proud or ashamed of you, you decide. Life will pass faster than you know it, and whether you make the most of it, the choice is yours.
4.2. Pain, Pressure, Peers
When you have to do something, it will get done. Deadlines accelerate. When a deadline comes around, suddenly, everything flows. A deadline lets you focus and filter everything unessential. They add certainty, accountability, and things to leverage your subconscious – they align every thought to your goal.
Competition is another form of pressure. Where does a dandelion grow taller, on a meadow or on the side of a road, where it’s alone? They grow taller in a meadow.
Pain is also a fantastic motivator. When there’s no other choice, magic can happen.
4.3. When there’s no other option
I need to become a millionaire. I don’t want to get rich; I need to. My parents have a precise vision for my life. They want me to study some random nonsense in university, they want me to get an ugly girl boss wife, and they want me to work in a job that doesn’t add any real value to the world. Daddy wants me to be a nerd. The problem is, I’m not really into ugly women, being a nerd, and having an unfulfilling job. I don’t want that kind of life. So, I have no other choice. Do you truly understand what ‘I need’ means? It means I can’t live any other way. I wouldn’t ever kill myself, but I couldn’t live any other way. If I lost everything, I would have nothing to lose. If there’s nothing to lose, one can only gain. This is my only choice. I never want to suffer the pain of a dull and unfulfilling life.
4.4. Momentum
How have I stayed on self-improvement for three years? Because my life kept getting better.
How did I have enough will for this to be my 96th publication? Because every text can change someone’s life.
How did I keep working nine hundred days in a row? How did I keep working, even if it meant working on the beach? How could I put thousands of hours into my now-failed apps? Because I felt the difference.
I love to give my best. I want to exhaust myself. I’m full of life.
4.5. Energy transmutation
Anger is direction. I can feel fury to the point where I can work all day long. I’m angry that my parents want me to get an ugly girlfriend. I needed genuine fury to overcome my phone addiction and to fix my life. Anger, hate, and disgust are perfect motivators.
When I’m in despair, insecure, or bitter, I train even harder. When I feel depressed, I get braver. When I feel shame, I reassess my life choices. When I feel jealous, I work harder. When I'm hopeless, I do pushups. When I'm frustrated, I push even harder.
Traumas accelerate. I’ve been homeless, emotionally abused, lonely, bullied, and sick; I saw a close relative die; I grew up without a father, and I'm still alive! Now I have a story and have seen things most never will.
Revenge is also a fantastic motivator. To all the girls who could have been mine, give me a few years!
I use every emotion as fuel. – That’s energy transmutation.
You are constantly transmuting energy, whether you realize it or not. For example, video games transmute the desire to explore, social media redirects your sexual desire, and sweets transmute the desire for healthy nutrition. The problem is that most transmutations work against you. That means that to use energy transmutation, you have to analyze your current energy flow. How do you analyze your energy flow? Through meditation in solitude.
Your strongest energy is sexual desire – the desire to create. By gaining control over it, you unlock mastery over every other energy; that’s how a genius is created. How do you master your sexual energy? By breathing upright and breathing deeply.
4.6. Your hot blonde
Without women, I wouldn’t be interested in the world. For that matter, I believe that no man would want to conquer, explore space, and do the impossible if it were not for women. Doing something to gain a woman’s respect is pure motivation.
5.1. The duty of being
What’s the meaning of life? Is it to serve others, be virtuous when no one is watching, live by God’s will, find your way, or love unconditionally? – I think all of these approaches have a common point: Life is a test.
5.2. Completion
What is perfectionism? Is it merely a mask for procrastination? Perhaps. But I also believe perfection is a silent whisper, “This is good, but it could be better.” Between the relentless pursuit of excellence, amidst the tension between good and great, true beauty is born.
Completion matters. One can find contentment in the present yet still pause, breathe deeply, and ponder, “Yes, I am happy. But could I not be more?” - That’s the essence of self-improvement, an intrinsic desire to transcend our current selves, to evolve continually.
Nature itself is an eternal quest for completion. A tree relentlessly stretches toward its ideal form. A stream flows tirelessly until it finds the sea. Mountains ascend until time, and elements shape them anew. In this ceaseless striving, we see the essence of true perfection.
Perfection is not a place to reach on a distant horizon. Instead, it’s a teacher. It is a call to embrace the process, find joy in striving, and see beauty unfolding. As we journey through life, each chapter brings a new landscape to traverse. My favorite emotion is how the golden leaves dance in the last sunshine of the year. Nothing is better than working on something for years, exhausting yourself, and then experiencing a few breaths of serene stillness. This is what fulfillment feels like—it is both fleeting and permanent. Each brush stroke may bring horror, but the resulting image is breathtaking.
5.3. Legacy
A teacher surpassed by his students becomes immortal. That’s legacy. - What do you want to leave behind? What do you want your life to be about? Do you want your name etched into eternity? Do you want to create more life?
5.4. Transcendence
In the quiet chambers of the soul lies transcendence. To transcend is to rise above the mundane, see beyond the immediate, and embrace the cosmic dance. The universe is harmoniously aligned with the eternal ballet of creation and dissolution. Life was never about you; it’s bigger than that—a terrifying and liberating insight. Life starts the moment you realize your cosmic insignificance.
Genuine purpose is transcendent—it’s beyond your ambition and desire. It echoes the primordial call of the universe, urging us to fulfill our unique roles in the grand symphony of existence. Viewing the bigger picture gives meaning to every moment. We find peace in knowing that our existence, though brief, contributes to the endless flow of time and space.
Being alive is the strangest experience one can have. Why is there a voice in one's head? What did one think thirty seconds ago? The sublime lies in these questions at the edge of our existence. It's not particularly challenging to live in excessive comfort. Expanding the edge is the hardest thing one can do. So, is it worth doing? - The sublime is precisely the edge of one's existence. It does not only break convention; it is the embodiment thereof.
Why not make the most of an eye’s blink called life?
Ultimately, transcendence is about unity. It is the realization that we are all interconnected, bound by the same cosmic threads. Our struggles, joys, and aspirations are all part of a larger narrative, a story that has unfolded since the dawn of time.
Do you see how love is the greatest source of motivation?