Be Better for Its Own Sake
By: Meredith Kirby
Tags: Self Improvement, Inspiration, Productivity, Life, Life Lessons

Have you ever tried really hard at something and gotten really depressing results? You’re not alone. It’s one of those uncomfortable truths of life: the amount of effort you put into a task doesn’t always translate into equivalent rewards.

Whether you’re trying to finish a project, learn a new skill, or change a habit, the path to success isn’t linear. Expecting your progress to follow a logical trajectory is likely to cause you to suffer. When there’s an imbalance of effort and reward in a task you’re working on, it can lead to discouragement and burnout.

Studies have shown that this feeling of effort-reward imbalance can have negative consequences on our physical and mental health. In the workplace, it can create negative feelings in employees. More than just making you feel bad, it can actually hurt you, as this kind of mental state can increase your susceptibility to illnesses.

Unsurprisingly, our brains favor low-effort, high-reward activities. Unfortunately, these activities are pretty few and far between in our daily lives, at least when it comes to the kind of rewards that last and matter.

If we want to accomplish anything that we actually care about, we can’t avoid the hard work. At the same time, we can’t always guarantee that our hard work will pay off.

It’s rare that something with real value will come to you easily, and it sucks sitting around feeling bitter, as well as potentially damaging your health when your high efforts aren’t translating into high rewards.

So what should you do instead?

Forget about it for a while

There’s always going to be a natural ebb and flow to whatever you try to do in life. You’ll encounter ups and downs, setbacks, course corrections, and all kinds of anxieties.

The secret to dealing with this is to stop thinking about it.

Store it away in the back corner on the highest shelf in your mind. Imagine the consciousness equivalent of where you would hide the cookies from your bratty nephew, and stick your feelings of unfairness right up there. In other words: out of sight, out of mind.

Stop worrying about the future and focus on what’s going on right in front of you. Remember that the only way to influence what happens in the future is to engage with the present.

The more you look ahead of you instead of around you, the more you rob yourself of two precious things: time and peace.

Build it into your routine

If you do something every day, you can’t help but become better at it; even if you’re terrible.

You might be an abysmal violinist, but if you pick up your instrument every day, improvement is inevitable. You might be out of shape, but that can’t last if you commit to exercising every morning. Writing your novel might seem daunting, but if you commit to typing 1000 words every day, eventually you will have a draft.

Doing something every day is a nearly infallible strategy for growth.

Release your unrealistic expectations

You probably won’t finish your memoirs by the end of the week, and you likely won’t learn to play Beethoven after your first piano lesson.

If you’re a gymnast, you’ll probably never go to the Olympics, and if you’re a scientist, you’ll probably never win a Nobel prize– but that doesn’t mean that you should stop doing backflips or inserting pipets into test tubes.

Unless you’re doing something obviously self-destructive, or something you honestly don’t enjoy, worrying about where you’re going to end up as a result of what you’re doing is a waste of time.

Really we all end up in the same place: the grave.

You’ll end up there regardless of whether you do the thing– we all will.

So do it already, while there’s still time.

Stop comparing yourself to others

Everyone is different, and everyone’s situation is different. You can’t expect yourself to learn something as quickly as someone else, do something as well as someone else, or achieve a goal within the same time frame.

There are all kinds of factors at play here: natural aptitude, environment, education, obstacles…none of which have anything to do with the amount of passion you have for your task or the amount of effort you’re putting into it.

Instead of feeling inadequate or envious because someone seems to be reaping greater rewards than you are, use your past self as a rubric to measure how far you’ve come.

The only person you ever really need to compete against is you, and beating your former self at whatever game you’re playing is an incredibly satisfying feeling.

Let it become a part of who you are

I used to think it was Aristotle who said, “we are what we repeatedly do,” but I learned recently that this quote is a misattribution, and was actually penned by Will Durant in his book The Story of Philosophy.

In my case, the fact that I felt the need to fact-check the origins of this quote is evidence of its truthfulness. Years of doing research for college papers, blog posts, Twitter arguments and the satisfaction of my own curiosity has turned me into the sort of person who looks into the origins of quotes.

When we do something repeatedly it becomes a habit, and after a while, our habits become our instincts.

I drink a full glass of water when I wake up in the morning because I’ve done it every morning for the past several months. It’s not something I have to think about– I’m pouring it before my eyes are even fully open.

You might not think you’re a writer, but if you keep writing, you will become one. You might not think you’re a nice person, but if you keep saying and doing kind things, you will be.

Here’s something Aristotle actually did say:

“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”

Stop wondering if it’s “worth it”

Regardless of the outcomes, you grow and develop your character as a result of whatever you’re struggling with.

The journey you’re on isn’t about where you end up, it’s about the adventures you have along the way, and the person you become as a result.

It’s not the task itself that matters; what matters is that you’ve chosen it, and continue to choose it.

It’s not only worth it. It’s worth it on its own.

Be better

Not for money, not for fame, not for accolades, not for admiration, not to succeed, not to “win,” but just to be better.

Don’t worry about finishing– the only thing that matters is that you start.