If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.

The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated.

The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated. That’s why I loved PT in BUD/S and why I still love it today. Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.

if you are going to be pushed you had better jump

When you push people where they don’t want to be pushed, you will face even more resistance.

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires. This is why the subjects in the Hofmann and Baumeister study had such a hard time fighting desires — over time these distractions drained their finite pool of willpower until they could no longer resist. The same will happen to you, regardless of your intentions — unless, that is, you’re smart about your habits.

To be worn out is to be renewed.

There are two ways of exerting one's strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

Most people in the world, if they ever push themselves at all, are willing to push themselves only so far. Once they reach a cushy plateau, they chill the fuck out and enjoy their rewards, but there’s another phrase for that mentality. It’s called getting soft, and that I could not abide.

Major objectives are the unseen force that pulls us into the future. Through <b>our daily activity</b> and <b>discipline</b> we provide the push to propel us toward success. But it is the dream of the future achievement of our objectives that pulls us along day after day and pulls us through the major obstacles we encounter along the way. The exciting thing about this process is that <b>the more we push, the more the future begins to pull.</b> As we demonstrate our unwavering determination to conquer our limitations, increase our intelligence and achieve our objective, that still, small voice within us begins to speak its special and promising message adding to the pull of the future. <b>As we listen carefully to this voice, and respond instinctively to its urgings, the pull becomes stronger and the future more certain.</b>

If you just keep doing, you will burn out and grind to a halt.

You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it. Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character that you can deploy without limit; it’s instead like a muscle that tires.

For what wears out the life of mortal men?
'Tis that from change to change their being rolls:
'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
Exhaust the energy of the strongest souls,
And numb the elastic powers.
Till having us'd our nerves with bliss and teen,
And tir'd upon a thousand schemes our wit,
To the just-pausing Genius we remit
Our worn out life, and are — what we have been.

- <i>The Scholar Gipsy</i>

I saw that to do exceptionally well you have to push your limits and that, if you push your limits, you will crash and it will hurt a lot. You will think you have failed — but that won’t be true unless you give up.