At some point or another, everyone has likely heard the following words of wisdom:
Follow your bliss. Pursue what you love. Do what feels good.
And while yes, these suggestions are valid, important, and well-intentioned, there’s something detrimental with the notion of guiding your experiences based only on what feels good.
Leading hypnotherapist and author, Marisa Peer, suggests that to be truly successful, we must do what we hate.
Wait…what?
Yes. You heard that right. To pursue genuine and lasting success, we must be willing to do the things we really don’t like. And we’re going to tell you why.
But first, let’s find out a little more about Marisa Peer.
Who is Marisa Peer?
Marisa Peer is a world-renowned hypnotherapist, nutritionist, speaker, and bestselling author. She was named Best British Therapist by Men’s Health magazine and has been featured extensively on both television and radio.
Marisa Peer has spent over twenty-five years working to improve the lives of her clients, a list which includes rock stars, A-list actors, media personalities, CEOs, Royalty, and Olympic athletes. Today, Marisa promotes her Rapid Transformational Therapy method (RTT) to help others empower themselves and steer their lives toward lasting success.
In a recent discussion with Vishen Lakhiani, founder and CEO of Mindvalley, Marisa Peer sat down to explore what differentiates high performance, successful individuals from everyone else.
Marisa explained that the biggest factor that separates high performers from the rest? Doing what you hate.
Why True Success Means Doing What You Hate
So, why would Marisa Peer suggest doing what you hate to attain success? Aren’t we supposed to be pursuing our passions? How can doing what we hate contribute to our accomplishments?
Well, Marisa uses the example of working out to exemplify this strange sounding concept. Many people, when first embarking on a quest to improve their fitness, don’t enjoy going to the gym. Exercise is difficult. It challenges the body. It taxes our reserves of energy. We leave sweaty and exhausted and really, who has time to dedicate an hour a day to regular exercise?
The truth is, exercise is never easy. The body is designed to safeguard its energy, which is why exercise can be such a challenge. But the more you delve into the routine of regular exercise, the more you begin to understand the intrinsic and long-lasting benefits of fitness.
Becoming a healthier person means eating well and exercising, two things we may not naturally be inclined to enjoy. It’s a lot easier to reach for a bag of chips and sit on the couch. But when you can convince yourself to get up and try something that’s going to challenge you, both mentally and physically, that’s where true accomplishment comes into play.
This example demonstrates exactly what Marisa Peer is suggesting. If we want to learn how to be successful, we’re going to have to be willing to do the things we don’t like.
However, you can actually trian your brian to do these things you don’t like. Here is some more wisdom from Marisa Peer on how to do just that:
The path to prosperity and achievement isn’t always lined with butterflies and daisies and rainbows. Sometimes, it’s a slog through the mud. But we have to be willing to put ourselves through it, to climb the hill, to leap each hurdle as it comes, to attain our dreams.
High-Performance Habits for Lasting Success
Doing what you hate doesn’t sound particularly appealing, does it? But rest assured, not only is this strategy incredibly worthwhile, it’s also easier to incorporate by following a few simple guidelines.
Marisa Peer says that successful, high-performance individuals have worked hard to gain admittance to a club, an elite club of like-minded successful people that were willing to make sacrifices for their aspirations.
So, if you liken doing what you hate to the cost of membership to that club of successful like-minded individuals, it’s easier to conceptualize how to get where you want to be.
If you want to prosper and grasp hold of long-lasting success, this is the cost of membership. Doing what you hate. And gradually, things become easier. It won’t be an endless mountainside toil. Because eventually, you do reach the top. And the view from up there? It’s pretty fantastic.
So, here are some high performance habits you can use to jumpstart your progression:
1. Identify what you hate
The most important step in utilizing Marisa Peer’s advice is to first identify what you don’t like.
Grab and pen and a piece of paper and make a list of the things you encounter in your day to day routine that you generally don’t enjoy. If you can, see if you can rank each activity or item by preference, least tiresome and tedious to most.
This may feel like a counterproductive activity — why focus on things you don’t like? But don’t worry. This list will come in handy.
2. Do the ‘Ugh’ stuff first
Marisa Peer explains that after you identify what your least favorite chores and activities are, those are precisely the things you should aim to tackle first.
Slay your biggest dragon as early on in your day as you can. Hate working out? Get it over with in the morning. Dislike making client calls? Get them over with as soon as you get to your desk.
Identify the things that irk you the most, then plan to execute these items first. That way, you have no large stressors hanging over your head, and you start your day off with a sense of potent accomplishment.
3. Don’t wait for motivation
This holds especially true for artistic pursuits, but is a valuable lesson for everyone. Don’t wait for the inspiration, motivation, or enthusiasm to grace you with its presence. If you really want something, you’re going to have to chase it down yourself.
It’s not easy to pursue your aspirations when you feel discouraged, depressed, or uninspired. But building the habit of going through the motions, even when you don’t exactly feel like it? That’s an important skill that will help you build stable success.
4. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
We have to be able to withstand the difficulties that come to call. There’s much in our lives we have little control over. While we can do our best to tweak the circumstances, challenges will arise.
We have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. We have to be willing to push ourselves (of our own accord) outside our personal comfort zones and straight into discomfort. That’s how strength is built. That’s how perseverance and grit are developed.
It won’t always be easy. But the stronger we are, the better we weather the storm.
5. Pay your dues
If there’s something you want to achieve, somewhere you want to go, a project you want to pursue, sooner or later, you’ll need to pay your dues.
Very few high performing, successful individuals are handed their dreams on a platter. They had to sweat it out, work hard, and put their hours in. Paying your dues is an important rite of passage, and nearly any successful person you ask will have plenty of stories to tell about the hardships they had to navigate to attain their aspirations.
Don’t be afraid to delve headlong into the grind. When you achieve success, knowing how hard you worked to get there, your moments of triumph will be all the sweeter.
Marisa Peer has plenty of informative ideas on how to sculpt the life you want and direct your path toward continued success.
