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Making progress is one of the most important facets of life as a human being. We’re geared and wired to love progress and always look for ways to reproduce and push the species as a whole forward.

Making progress in our own lives on many of the things that we have come to care about can prove itself to be much more difficult though.

I love to make progress on the things that I’m learning and trying to get better at. Seeing progress happen is a miracle of life - kind of like a flower sprouting into fullness - it’s majestic to watch it unfold.

But the actual work - crossing your t’s and dotting your i’s and just grinding your way forward - can be painful, to say the least. It can be hard to get started on new habits.

It can be hard to work your butt off each day and not have much to show for it. It can be extremely hard when you’re working on things that have no immediate payoff or very little immediate payoff. 

These types of things - where the payoff is big but it’s far off in the future - can be hard to work on each day. Motivating yourself is the key. You cannot get motivated externally, you can only add gas to a fire that you’ve already lit all on your own.

One of the most effective tactics in my tool belt for being motivated each and every day is to write down the reasons *why* the payoff is worth all of this incredible hardship. Why the payoff is so downright amazing and infatuating that it’s worth beating yourself up every single day in order to achieve it.

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As you may have noticed, I’ve started a podcast recently. So I’ll show you how I apply this tactic of writing down the reasons *why* as it relates to starting a podcast.

I just got done recording the episode for today. It’s episode 3 of my podcast and it’s definitely an improvement from the previous ones.

Seeing that improvement is really great but I still have to battle with an inner voice in my head that tells me that this is all a waste of time and I should focus on writing and other endeavors.

I battle that voice everyday, but what can truly silence that voice is my *why*. My reason for podcasting. My reason for beating myself up each day.

The reason why I beat myself up everyday in order to get better at recording my voice in podcast format is multi-fold, here are some of the main reasons:
1. Being able to articulate your ideas via speech is an essential skill for thousands upon thousands of different crafts - I’m the type of person who loves to master a wide array of skills so that I can be extremely adaptable to any situation that life throws at me. Being articulate in your speech can allow you to be phenomenal at selling anything, getting hired anywhere, raising capital, operating a podcast, vlogging, etc…. The list goes on my friends!
2. A podcast that is well-developed can lead to a lot of great relationships, business deals, investments, ideas, etc etc.
3. The act of making the podcast requires me to learn something through teaching and speaking… Speaking about something requires that you know at least a little nugget of information that you feel the need to pass on to your listeners.

Anyways, you get where I’m going with this idea of creating a podcast and sticking to it no matter how bad I am at it right now.

Improving my podcasts episode by episode will only lead to me getting better at the multitude of skills that I mentioned above. 

If you haven’t yet listened to my podcast, there are 2 episodes out right now: 1 on Dtube and 1 on DLive - please let me know what you think of them!! There’s a new one dropping later tonight!!

Thank you for your immense support and constructive criticism!! It’s highly appreciated and it’s helping me get better!