"Suck it up!"

How often do you find yourself disappointed? That's a question worth asking yourself. When I ask myself how often I am disappointed I'm usually surprised with my own answer. I find myself disappointed fairly often to tell you the truth. Sometimes when I feel disappointed I find myself sulking and moping around like a young child who didn't get the toy he wanted for Christmas. Is this productive? No not really. Does this make me feel good about myself? No not really. Do I feel better after moping for a day or two then I would have if I were to have simply "Sucked it up" as they say? No probably not.

Lets talk about "Sucking it up". I'm sure you have all heard the term before, maybe you were complaining about a bad day at work, or maybe you had to get up off the couch to do something and you decided to whine about it a little bit and somebody blurts out those three powerfully motivational words, "suck it up!". I'm not sure there is anyone out there who likes to be told to "suck it up", I know I don't like it. When somebody tells me to "suck it up" I assume that they are implying that they think I'm lazy or I am complaining to much, or that I'm not working as hard as they think I should be and of coarse no body likes to be told any of those things. So then why is it when someone tells us to "suck it up" we usually do, and we usually do it without hesitation. How can those three little words hold so much motivational power? Although nobody likes to be told to "suck it up" I think deep down inside of us we all want to be told to, just so we can prove that we can. I'm not to sure if there is a legal definition of the term "suck it up" but if there was I think it would look something like this.

"Suck it up!": The action of metaphorically sucking up ones limitations. To lay aside all excuses and predispositions and simply get on with the task at hand, be it a mental, physical, or emotional task.

Well, when you put it that way its not so bad is it? You might be asking by this point "what the hell does this have to with disappointment?" well I'm getting there. Disappointment is only a byproduct of expectation. We get disappointed only when something we expect to happen doesn't. We get disappointed when people promise us things and don't deliver, also expectation. Before we can ask ourselves why are we disappointed, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we expected. If we know what we expected and we know that we didn't get what we expected we can expect to be disappointed. Sound complicated? Take a look at your life as you live it right now. Are you disappointed frequently and often wonder why? Well wonder no more, its your expectations. I'm not saying that your expectations are to high, maybe they are just not in the right place. If somebody promises me something should I expect them to deliver? Of coarse we should, it wouldn't be a promise if we couldn't expect a delivery, but something we should also expect is the possibility of being let down. Just because we have total and complete faith in somebody or something that doesn't mean we can expect the same results every single time, especially when we are talking about people and human nature. Expecting things from a machine such as a computer is one thing, but expecting things from other humans is whole other ball game. Its human nature to change, constant change in life is something unavoidable if a person wants to grow. If something is changing all the time how can we expect the same results all the time? We can't and that's just a fact. So if you're tired of feeling disappointed and let down might I suggest taking a close look at your expectations in life. Like I said earlier, we don't have to stop trusting or expecting things from the people we love. We just have to expect the unexpected, and expect that no matter how reliable something is in your life, things change. So in the end of all this next time you feel disappointed and don't know why just "suck it up" and try to take another look at those expectations.

Jesse Roulette
Expecting things One at a Time

What is Motivation?

What is motivation? Is it what helps us all get out of the bed in the morning? Is it what gets us all to work on time? What if we lost our motivation somewhere down the line? How do we get it back? Unfortunately I don't have the answer to that question yet and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone. Maybe by the end of this post we can learn something together, and maybe just maybe have an answer to that question.

I envy those people who wake up in the morning and feel fresh and cheery. Its been a long time since I felt that way, and I'm about ready to get that feeling back. I'm writing this post in the hopes that I can pinpoint exactly where I lost my motivation. I guess I figure if I know where I lost it I'll know where to find it, but is that really the answer? We all want to be able to say we're happy with our lives and we enjoy the start of every day but the truth is that a lot of us can't say that. Is that fair? Who cheated us out of that blissful sensation? Could we have done it to ourselves? No, that can't be it, or can it?

Motivation seems to come in two forms. There is regular old motivation which can come in the form of a movie we saw, or a song we heard, or even a special person we met somewhere along the line, but this type of motivation never seems to last that long, and its a little hard to come by isn't it? The other form of motivation is called self motivation and its even harder to come by, at least for some of us, well at least for me anyways. I've spent a lot of time thinking about where I left my motivation, or where I may have lost it and how to find it again. At the end of all my pointless recollecting I realized something. I didn't lose my motivation and it wasn't taken from me, I simply put it away and I chose not to see or use it anymore. It wasn't a conscious choice but it was still a choice. This is a choice that is inside of all of us and its up to us and only us to make this choice. We can wait for some amazing life changing event to come along and motivate us or we can say to hell with it and put aside the sorrow or the pity or the shame or whatever the hell it is we hid our motivation behind and take it back with a vengeance. Lets forget about why or where we hid our motivation and focus on the fact that its still there and its still ours and nobody not even yourself can take it away from you. So the next time you or someone you know "loses" there motivation think about it and take a another look a little closer to home.

Jesse Roulette
Hopefully motivating One at a Time.