You wake up in the morning. It’s 6 or 7am. You feel exhausted. Maybe you spent the whole night working on a project, maybe you’re just tired in general, maybe you even just had a little bit too much to drink last night. You don’t feel like getting out of bed. The room is too cold and the blankets provide warmth. Your body feels weak, or even worse, your mind. Maybe you feel unmotivated or depressed.
So you just lay there, comforted by the sheets and pillows. You think to yourself: “I don’t need to get up quite yet. That meeting - I can be late. That product that needs more development - I’ll save it for tomorrow. The bills - who pays bills anyway?”
But you feel this sense of guilt. You know immediately what it is. It’s that drive you’ve been trying to push into the recesses of your mind. An itch at the back of your head that just won’t go away, no matter how comfortable you are in your warm bed. It claws at you, and it won’t let up.
Ah, but you’re comfortable. No need to scratch that itch, right? It’ll go away over time, like all itches do.
But then you remember your heroes. Your idols. The people whose achievements and feats have inspired you and countless others. The rule-breakers, the game-changers, the weirdos who’ve made an impact on the world.
They probably at some point in their lives felt the same way you do at this very moment. Exhausted. Unmotivated. Lazy, even. Thing is though, how were they able to do the things they were able to do?
It’s simple. They got out of bed, and went to work.
And that makes you think - they’re no different from you. They simply made the choice to get up. So you slowly rise from the covers, still feeling all the exhaustion, the depression, the lack of motivation. But you get up, and go to work.
And that is what will make all the difference.
“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”
Steve Jobs