Monday Motivation, 3.9.2020

Written by: Ben Rogers

Every Monday, The Rogers-Long Team meets for one of its two weekly meetings. The Monday meeting always ends with “Monday Motivation” in which a few minutes are spent listening to one team member presenting a quote, a quick reading from a book, a scene from a movie, or anything else they find motivating to provide a “spark” to the whole team on a Monday morning.

I’ve never liked running. I’ve never really had a problem with getting to the gym or motivating myself to work out, but running has never been exciting for me. I think treadmills are boring, I don’t find it very much fun to run around the neighborhood and explore, and running around a track is like a death sentence to me. That being said, if there is one fact I’ve found with trying to get in shape and lose weight, it’s that cardio is an absolute must. Your goals do not care whether you like it or not.

A few years ago, I made the commitment to pursue my health and fitness goals with the same intense focus I did my professional goals. I found that accomplishing physical goals and accomplishing professional goals had one very important thing in common. The people who accomplish their goals the quickest and the most frequent at some point made a personal mindset commitment: they stopped lying to themselves.

In sales, you can beat your way around the bush and say that you made the number of calls you know you’re supposed to. You can dial a number, the person doesn’t answer, you hang up, and log it as a phone call. After all, who will actually know? You can exaggerate an interaction with a client and tell yourself it was a productive use of your time even though you never even mentioned the fact that you were never too busy to work with any of their referrals. You can tell us you’re doing all of these productive things because we’re not out there watching your every move. Lying to yourself is always an easy way out.

In life, there are so many opportunities to lie to yourself when pursuing your goals. You can tell us that you’re eating better, waking up earlier, spending more personal time with your family. But if you’re cheating even a little bit – maybe it’s one little cheat snack that you don’t think matters, maybe it’s hitting the snooze button (even only one time!), maybe it’s being in the living room with your spouse but your face is still locked into your computer – all you’re doing is lying to yourself.

An action plan to pursue goals is very black and white. There is absolutely no room for gray area. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve done it, I’ve done it, we’ve all done it. We make little excuses for ourselves and lie to ourselves to make us feel better.

This is what I’ve learned to love about a treadmill. The treadmill does not lie. You can tell yourself you’ve been getting faster – but once we put you on the treadmill, the process better match the results that are coming out of your mouth.

Treadmills – yes, they’re boring. But we all know the professionals execute the boring. The amateur lies to himself. The professionals are committed to being early or on time, but the amateurs are “usually running late to appointments.” The professionals commit to being prepared while the amateur is always “going in a million different directions.” While the amateur is “too busy,” the professional is productive, efficient and sets proper expectations.

I’ll state again that if there’s one thing I know to be true about accomplishing goals it’s this: your goals do not have room for gray area. Your goals do not care if you don’t like the boring stuff and they certainly don’t care if you like the action plan to accomplish them. Your goals care about one thing and one thing only: did you do what was required or did you not?

The truth about a treadmill is that you cannot lie. There is no setting on a treadmill that says “well this is kind of like running a 6-minute mile.” You either set the pace and run at it, or you don’t.

I urge you to make that change in your life and I promise that once you do, it’ll open up your entire world. Once you commit your actions to the words you speak, your goals will find you much quicker than before.

Hard work means one thing – you do what you say you’re going to do and you do not lie to yourself about the actions you know are required to get results. I know for a fact that I will NOT cut it short and I will finish – whether that’s on the treadmill, in my work, or at home with my family. So I’ll conclude with a question from someone who does not lie to himself and I hope that you can ask your competition the same: If I’m already better than you and I work harder than you, how could you ever expect to beat me?

 

Ben Rogers, The Team Leader of The Rogers-Long Team, has been in the real estate business since 2012. In 2014, he began The Rogers-Long Team with Kevin Long, which produced over $25,000,000 in volume production in 2017. In addition to selling homes and leading the team, Ben hosts a podcast show called the “The Bottom Line”, which can be found by clicking here. The Bottom Line is a Podcast that links lessons learned from sports, business, and life and is targeted at those who are striving for excellence, while ‘Average Sits on the Bench’.