 Ladies and gentlemen, Salah Mike, that's me. Back with another video. New videos every Monday and Thursday. Be sure to subscribe, turn on notifications, hit us with a thumbs up. Let's see if we can reach 1,000 likes. Comment below what topics you want me to cover on the channel. We're talking fitness, nutrition, life, hot topics. Sometimes I'm just giving you my opinions on things. Other times I'm giving you answers to your questions, which you've hit me up tons in the DMs recently. And it's a very common question and there's no direct answer to it, but there's a lot of thoughts I have on it. I like to do these videos after I do my cardio. Today I didn't train, I've been basically doing a legs push pull off cycle with my training and I do maybe 20 minutes of cardio after every training day. And then on my off day, depending on my mood, my schedule, my motivation, which is the topic at hand, I'll do another maybe 30, 40 minutes. And I like to do these videos after that because one, I feel good mentally and physically. Two, it gives me time. I just do kind of steady state moderate cardio. So sometimes I'm on the stair step or pushing it, but I'm not sprinting. And other times I'm doing a walk or a jog or a bike or a little elliptical deal where I'm breathing pretty heavy, but I'm going hard enough to really sweat and breathe, but I'm not going too hard where I'm all out of force and I can't think because I use that time to think of these videos, to think of my life, to organize myself. And so the most common question I've probably received in seven years doing YouTube podcast, Instagram, Twitch, all those things is, Mike, how do you stay motivated? How do you go to the gym when you don't want to? How do you stay motivated for so long going to the gym with business, with work, with relationships, whatever it might be, because motivation is not just with the gym. When we talk about motivation, people often think about negative things. You know, you've got to try and find a motivation to lose weight because you can't lose weight. You've got to try and find motivation to do your chores because you don't want to do those. Find motivation to do your homework because that's something you don't want to do. The actual definition of motivation is a noun and it's the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular manner. And when you think about motivation that way, it's so correct and it's so self-explanatory. But when we think about a motivation, I think when people in the world think about motivation, finding motivation, like it's something we have to listen to a loud M&M song or watch the biggest deadlift or deadlift ever on YouTube to get all fired up, we think about all this emotion and going crazy and just automatically wanting to go do something. Now motivation doesn't mean that you must want to go do something. And for me, it always starts with big picture goals and what really drives me day in and day out. What I feel fulfills me as a human and what I think I can give to the world with my gifts and all that starts with self-awareness. So you guys know me, if you've watched me for any extent of time, I'm the opposite. I hate motivation life guru guys that are telling you who to be, how to be and a bunch of rah rah speeches because I think that's so fleeting and I think it's so fake. But I'm trying to put what I think about when I meditate, do cardio, how I organize my life, my business, my content, my personal relationships, how I line those up and I'm just trying to explain to you how I figure out my motivation or my discipline. And the reasons or reasons for acting or behaving a particular way for me is all based on what I wanna do. And I have a tier of how many goals and what goals run my life and then what goals run each system, right? So in my system, I have family, family and friends, personal, I have fitness and my fitness goals and then I have my work and my business goals and within each of those, fitness, life, and business, I try to find things that make me happy. And that sounds kinda selfish, we're like, oh, your family and your friendships, like shouldn't that be about family and friendships? It should, but I'm not gonna be a family, a good family member, friend, boyfriend, whatever if I'm not happy in those relationships. And same with business, like oh, well, shouldn't your business provide a service to the world and help people? It should, I definitely believe in it should and for me to feel fulfilled, it should. But I need to feel fulfilled and I need to feel good about that situation and same with my fitness. I can't do my fitness for you. I can't get shredded six-pack because the internet told me to. I can't get a shredded six-pack for Instagram likes. I have to get a shredded six-pack because it fulfills me or whatever the case may be, deadlift 700, squat 500, whatever your goals are, get faster, get stronger, et cetera. So for me, the overall broad picture is always take care of my mom, take care of myself, take care of those around me. I'm gonna, everything I do in life is trying to do that. Beyond that, step number two for my ultimate goals is always put a smile on as many faces I can, teach and entertain as many people as I can in this world. I've been through dark times. You've been through dark times. We all go through different dark times. We all are affected differently by different things in life and we all have different paths in life but we all go through really dark times and I've been through some dark times in my teenage years, in my early 20s, some dark thoughts, some obsessive thoughts and if I can help somebody smile, find a hobby, find some fun either on the internet, podcast, Twitch, whatever it is that I'm doing, maybe smile or be entertained for a little bit just to get out of that dark spot or hopefully shed some light on some happier, better things in life, then I'm gonna continue to do what I do and I'm gonna continue to push. Now within each of these goals, this motivation is always dependent on what those goals are and those goals can change. Now my goals haven't really changed in the broad scope. My broad scope has been like that for 10 years. Once I figured out what I wanna do with life, what I believe my gifts are, what I believe finds fulfillment in me and I can help others in, that's the broad scope. Now breaking it down, those goals change often. In the personal right, what friends you hang out with, what you can do for your friends, give for your friends, what you find fun with your friends, your loved ones, they come, they go, sometimes you talk to some more than others, girlfriends, boyfriends, all those things are constantly moving so maybe the goals are different. Oh, I wanna communicate more with this person, I want to hang out more with this person, I want to find new friends, I want to spend more time alone, all that personal things, those can change and so the motivation, the reasons behind it can also change because it's based on that goal. And then same with fitness. I had a lot of fitness goals my entire life, trying to become the best basketball player I can. I played a little bit of college, a little semi pro and then once that career kind of ended, my goals switched and I turned into more of a powerlifting even though I competed every year and I still have competed almost every single year for the last seven, eight years, my goals were just to get stronger and now my goals are somewhere different. My goal is now for fitness and the reason why I do them, the reason why is because I want to feel better, I want to be more productive in the other things in my life, the personal and the business, I want to be healthy for long term, I want to look a little bit better and I wanna be a little bit healthier every single day and so those are my fitness goals and then in the business side, business is always changing what I want to do, how many, you know, I have my hand in a lot of different honeypots with podcasts, YouTube, Kaizen, all these different things, couple things on the back end, sponsorships, et cetera, et cetera and so those are always changing and the reasons why I do them is obviously for me, hopefully again, the broader scope is to help people, entertain people, et cetera and then in return, give them some kind of service that can help them. For me, it's always to provide for my family and again, providing for my mom, providing for me and some financial freedom to allow me to do the things I want to do in all of those categories. So how do you find motivation? How do you find discipline? You know, it's hard because all these Instagram gurus and fitness people and YouTubers are waking up like, man, I can't wait to hit chest day, you wee. But that's a very small percentage of the world, I think, that gets so excited about that day in and day out. We're all gonna have our bad days. We're all gonna have our good days. Yes, there's plenty of days that I do want to go work out. I'm excited to go, you know, hit some chin-ups or whatever, it might be squad a little bit heavy but I've literally been through months, weeks and months of going through stages where I just don't want to work out but what allows me to do that again are these overarching goals and then the goals within these categories and I'm not that life guru that tells you, oh, you need to write everything down and you need to plan and you need to use. I'm not that guy, I'm not that organizer of a person, that's not how my brain works. You have to find the way that your brain works and what keeps you motivated, what keeps you going out a day in and day out. And these goals, they can be short-term goals but if you're gonna ever try to make progress in anything, we have to get these long-term goals. Another thing that popped up in my head when this kind of stuff happens is, you know, I'm heavily involved in kind of the gaming community. I've been on Twitch for a year and a half. I've been watching the gaming community for five years, I've been playing games my whole life and then I've been in fitness, you know, obviously my whole life for a really long time online and it's hard to read through because you can't know these people, they're just creating content on the internet and so you don't know what's going on in their mind and I never want to judge anybody but what I find to be true with a lot of people I see in everyday life and on these platforms and especially in these categories, the correlation between the two is that everyone self-justifies how hard they're freaking grinding but if that grinding isn't allowing you fulfillment or helping society, you're absolutely wasting your time. So, example is someone who's powerlifting and what they really want is maybe financial freedom, they want to be healthier and they want to get an Instagram famous for the wrong reasons because they say people being successful and driving Ferraris on that thing with hot girls all over them. Those are maybe what's their driving factors and none of those have to do with maybe self-fulfillment and then the biggest issue is that his actions, his or her actions don't correlate with what those goals are and so he's spending all this time grinding and waking up at 4 a.m. to hit the squat and hitting the ammonia and all I do is I go to bed, I take my vitamins, I'm drinking my water and I powerlift every single day but that goal doesn't correlate or those actions, excuse me, don't correlate with this goal and same thing in gaming. Everyone's talking about grinding this and grinding that, oh, I've been really grinding this game. Now, what you look at the top, if you look at the top of the fitness industry and the top of gaming, Twitch streaming, et cetera, yes, those people are grinding out certain games or hobbies or in the gym or YouTube videos or whatever it might be because that's their livelihood. That's what they're getting paid for and that allows them to provide for their families, financial freedom to do what they want, et cetera, but for the vast majority, that's not the case. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't be obsessive and put a lot of time and effort into what you love or to what you wanna do but what I'm saying is don't self-justify this grind or this hustle or this motivation and it doesn't line up with your actual goals are and that, again, those should be longer term goals and shorter term goals. If you're short term goals to pull 600, that's fine and dandy, you're gonna have to deadlift a certain amount of times to get there but if your ultimate goal is to be a Broadway singer, maybe you should weigh and rebalance and reassess where you're putting your energy, where you're putting your effort and where you're putting into this grind. Not saying this grind's always gonna pay out, right? We have a saying, sacrifice the unknown, we have to do a certain amount of work. We don't know the outcome but we have to put in that certain amount of work for us to have the best chance to succeed at this outcome but just make sure that your efforts, where you're putting your energy, who you're putting your energy to, lines up with where your goals are short term and long term. The same thing, right? With power lifting, all these people are lifting, grinding but if your goals are to be at that top level, you might have to get to that but you might have to do it more efficiently. Banging your head on the wall isn't gonna happen over or help over and over and over. We have to find more efficient ways. We have to be a little creative and are thinking you have to stay true to yourself, being self-aware enough with your goals and who you are to get to where you wanna go. Now I know that's a lengthy answer but that's just a bunch of ideas and thoughts that popped in my head when I was doing cardio. Be sure to give this thing a thumbs up, man. Follow me, Twitch, 50% Twitch, Silent Micro 2Ks, 50% Facts, podcasts every Wednesday. Super informational if you guys are into what's happening in the fitness world, science and experts. We're covering a bunch of different topics and I'll see you guys in the next one. Silent Micro, right here.