The Daily Practice: How To Stay Consistent When Motivation Fades

Today is my 150th episode of Guy's Set. That is so crazy to think that something that started as an idea in my head for something I wanted to see in the world now has a catalog of 150 episodes. It is so crazy to think that I have been doing this for almost 150 weeks, almost.

three years of this podcast so far. And it's really starting to shape up into the thing I wanted to see in the world and the thing I never expected it to be at the same time. I started this as an idea because I thought that it should exist for guys just like myself to talk about all of the things that should be talked about for guys. I start every episode by saying, hi guys, welcome to guys, to the guys, I do what should be talked about. Because there are so many different topics, so many different areas, so many different things that you go through in this time in your life.

that are not talked about, are not discussed. And I have episodes across all of those different areas, all of those different topics, whether it's about dating or confidence, comparison or mindset, style, mental health, habits, moving, breakups, all these different things that you might experience or relate to throughout this time in your life. And at the same time, I feel like I'm just scratching the surface and I'm just starting. And it feels like it's just the beginning.

I feel like at the same time as this is a catalog of episodes that I'm so thrilled about and so excited that exist in the world that people can go back to listen to different topics, different things, search for the things that they're going through right now or the questions they have that they want answers to or advice on. And that exists at the same time. I feel like I'm just getting really good at this. I'm just getting better at it and better at the same time.

And that doesn't mean that there aren't weeks where I kind of miss or I have dips or things that aren't as good or I don't say as well as I wanted to. And I'm gonna talk about that through this episode. But the one thing I wanted to talk to you about and the reason I think I've gotten to 150 episodes and the reason I think I'm here to talk to you about it today is this thing I call the daily practice. And I realized something last week that became a much

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bigger realization for me about building something and about building really anything about greatness and about being in the pursuit of something great. And I'm going to tell you three examples or three stories that have given me this newfound understanding of what it takes to be in the pursuit of something or build something or just be great in general. One of the stories is the story of a flute player.

The other one is a New York Times bestselling author. And the third one is me with Guy Set So Far. So starting with the flute player, and you might be like, what the fuck do any of these things have to do with each other? And like, just stick with me because I think by the end of this episode, you will hopefully feel inspired to start to do whatever it is that you want to do. Start to take that risk on yourself and realize that it's not just a one day decision.

It is a daily decision. It is a daily practice that you have to get into in order to build anything, in order to be anything. And it is the consistency that it takes in order to get there. So starting with the flute player, I recently found this guy on TikTok who is at Juilliard. I believe he's a sophomore at Juilliard and he does these day in a life videos on TikTok, which basically means he takes us through a day in his life of a student at Juilliard, a flute player.

trying to be a great flute player. And from the moment he wakes up, he takes us with him till he goes to bed, not through everything, not through literally everything, but like through most of his day. And he shows all of these different moments that he practices the flute throughout the day. And the first time he did it,

I was like, okay, like he practices right when he wakes up. Like, of course, like everybody practices right when they wake up or like that, that makes sense. Like if he's going to this like most intense, best school ever for flute players, for artists, for musicians, like it makes sense that he wakes up and practices that, that computes for me. But then throughout the day, he practices like three to five more times. Like he wakes up and he makes his coffee and then he practices for like an hour. Then he goes to class.

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He goes back to his apartment, he practices for another hour. He goes back to class, he goes back home, he makes food, practices again. And I'm like, what is he practicing for? Like, is he doing? Why is he practicing so much? For all intents and purposes, like, he is already great. He is already at an amazing point in his flute playing career that like, he's already pretty impressive. He's already at a place where most people never even get to, a place where most people can't even really dream of, like,

It is so hard to get into that school. is such a massive accomplishment and a massive feat that like he's already pretty much on a path towards success with this. So what is he practicing for? And what I learned throughout the video and through a bunch of his videos is what he's practicing for is his craft. He's practicing to get better, to stay better, to stay the best. I saw him practice through the morning and through the night.

And it is a habit and a routine that this guy is in that he practices the thing he loves every single day. And it's almost not even a practice at this point. It's just a part of his life. At 2 p.m. he practices and then at 4 p.m. and then at 8 to 9 and then right before bed. And I thought, holy shit, like he is just constantly practicing. Like it's not really for anything. It's for himself. It's for the love of what he does and what he gets to do.

It's because he loves the thing he gets to do. And what I realized throughout watching his videos, it's not even like he's practicing for anything. It's just a part of his life. It's because he loves what he gets to do. And at 2 p.m., he gets to do it again. And at 4 p.m., he gets to do it again. And then at 8 to 9, he does it again. And then right before bed, he does it again. And it's because he loves this thing that he gets to do. He goes back to the thing he loves every single time.

And throughout watching all of his videos, I thought to myself, maybe that's what it takes to be great. It's not something that you can just hop into once a week or a few times a week if time permits or if you have time or if you can make the time throughout all the rest of the things you do. To be great, it has to be something that you practice daily.

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to be the best or to get better at anything, it has to be something that you constantly come back to, that you consistently practice. It's something you do every day without fail and without excuse. It's something you do every single day. And that's grit and that's persistence. And that's understanding what it takes to be great or what it takes to build something.

And I can't tell you his reasons for why he practices so many times a day or why he works at this so hard. But as somebody who does that in my own thing, I completely understand it. I completely get it. The next one I want to talk to you about is Elizabeth Gilbert. She is a New York Times bestselling author. I've talked about her on here a couple other times before. She wrote the book Eat, Pray, Love. It's what she's best known for. It's a really popular movie with Julia Roberts and

She gave this Ted talk that I'm going to paraphrase about success. I watched it again right before I came on here so I could get a better understanding of it even further. But I've watched this Ted talk so many times before. I find it really inspiring. I find it very grounding. It reminds me of what I need to do in order to succeed or what I need to do in order to stay consistent and to get better at whatever I'm doing.

And she talked about writing her next book after the worldwide success of the book Eat, Pray, Love. It was this astronomically successful book that became a movie and like just is still talked about now. And it's probably like a 20 year old book at this point. And she said that whatever she was going to do next was going to be disappointing. Whatever she was going to do next to the people that loved the book, it was never going to be that same book and it was going to disappoint them.

and for anybody that hated the book, they would be angry because it would provide evidence that she still lived. And with no way to win and just all of her overthinking and all of her doubting, she considered quitting the game entirely and stopping writing. But she realized that if she did that, she would be giving up on her calling.

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She felt the need to write something regardless of the inevitable outcome, whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. She said that she had to find a way to make sure her creativity survived its own success. And how the pressure felt insurmountable to meet the demands of the audience from her first book, and she was never going to be able to write something great after that. And how the book after completely flopped.

and how this journey of incredible success to absolute failure reminded her how her creativity could survive its own success. Now I'm gonna break all this down and I'm gonna tell you more about what she says and what I think of all of it because I think it's incredibly interesting. And she said in order to explain to you how she overcame her success and her doubt, she wanted to bring us back to before she was successful.

She failed to get published for six years. For almost six years, she had nothing to show for her writing career beside rejection letter after rejection letter every single day in her mailbox. And every time she got one, she was absolutely devastated and was left asking herself, should I just give up on this while I'm behind and spare myself all of the pain that comes with the rejection?

all of the pain that comes with this doubt and inconclusiveness about whether she'd be good, whether she'd be great because she was just getting rejected left and right and there was nothing to show for her career. And she would find resolve in this by saying, you know what, I'm not gonna quit, I'm just gonna go home. And home didn't mean returning to her childhood home or her home where she lived now. It meant returning to her work of writing because that was her home. Because she loved writing more than she hated failing at writing.

And that means she loved writing more than she loved her own ego. And that also means she loved writing more than she loved herself. And after the success of her first published book, she felt the same way she felt when she was unpublished for those six years. And that makes no sense, right? Like, why would somebody who has incredible success feel the same way as somebody who is a failure in the eyes of society?

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Because those two people are at incredibly different places in their lives, one failing constantly and one who succeeded beyond her wildest expectations. And this unlocked for her this kind of psychological connection between great failure and great success. They both catapult you into opposite directions, one objectively seen by the world as bad and one objectively seen by the world as good.

But your subconscious does not know the difference between good and bad. It can only feel the exact distance that you have been flung from yourself. And there is an equal danger of getting lost at either side. And the only way to self-restoration is to find your way back home from either direction. And if you don't know what your home is, your home is whatever you love in this world more than you love yourself.

Her examples of these things were family, creativity, invention, adventure, whatever you can dedicate your energy to with such singular devotion that the outcome of the ultimate results becomes inconsequential.

All you have to do is get your ass back to the thing or back to the work. And to me when she was saying this I was like, it completely makes sense to me now. Like, whatever happens, it doesn't matter because she always learned to come back to her craft. She would always come back to the thing that she loved more than herself. And for her, that was writing. No matter what,

She would always keep writing no matter what happened, whether she reached success, whether she completely failed. She would always write again, today, tomorrow, and the next day. She was always going to come back to that because it is the one thing that she loves more than herself. And this is where I connected it to the flute player in my mind because I had watched him like the day before. She's not training for something.

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She is constantly in pursuit of her practice, regardless of the outcome, because it is the thing she loves more than herself and the thing she believes in most. She then wrote a third book after the second flop that was received really well, but that wasn't the point. That was nice, but that's not the point of this. The point is that she's writing another one right now, and she'll write another one after that, and after that, and after that, and another, and another, and another.

and many will fail and some might succeed, but she will be safe from the random hurricanes of outcome as long as she never forgets where she rightfully lives. She finishes the TED talk by saying, I don't know where you live, but I know there is something in this world that you love more than yourself. And that is where you should build your house. And if you should get vaulted out of that house by great failure or by great success,

Your job is to fight your way back to that home the only way it has ever been done by putting your head down and performing with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence for whatever the task is. If you keep doing that again and again, I can assure you it is going to be okay. And that is kind of where it clicked for me that all of these different people in pursuit of such different things have one thing in common.

And it is coming back to the thing that you love, the thing you believe in, and the thing that you know is the thing you're supposed to do. Coming back again and again, regardless of the outcome, regardless of perception, regardless of what people say about you, regardless of what people think about you, you come back to the thing that you know you're supposed to do, again and again. And I really liked how she said it was with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence for whatever the task is.

And now on to my example, and Guy said, and I'm not saying this in comparison to these two people because I think they are at such incredibly different points in their lives, in their careers, and in their pursuit than I am. And for all intents and purposes as well, I think they're much greater. I think they are at a much higher and much greater level than I am. But I view them and I'm inspired by them and what they do and what it takes to get there.

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And I think anybody can take a lesson from that. think anybody can take that and use it to their advantage. I anybody can take that and use it to inform their own daily practice, to start doing whatever it is they want to do every single day to build something greater, to be something greater. I take inspiration from these people, and I think that you might too. When I started GuyScent, I thought that this could be something that I could just like...

clock into for an hour or so every single week and it would just develop and I would get better at it and I could just grow it and people would find it by doing that. Like I genuinely was like I'm gonna try this for like an hour or so a week and like see what happens. And I quickly learned that that is not how anything works. That is not how you build anything. That is not how anybody finds anything. That's not how you can be successful at anything. And I learned that it takes a consistent daily

practice, setting up systems, believing in yourself, making things happen every single day to make anything work, to get better at anything, to be consistent at anything. Like it requires a daily effort and a daily practice. And in the midst of all of that, there have been so many different moments where I have been catapulted in both directions that I have been talking about, which is in that direction of success and in the direction of failure.

There have been so many moments where I feel like I am at the top of the world in doing this, where a guest that I really wanted to have on comes on and the conversation is really great and I feel like the episode's amazing and it reaches a lot of people and it's successful and it's successful. Like there, is a moment where I feel like I have found success. And then in the complete opposite direction, there have been so many moments where I am absolutely crushed.

where I feel like I did not do the thing I set out to do at all. I messed up the episode. I didn't say the thing I wanted to say correctly. I didn't get a response. Somebody didn't respond at all. Somebody ghosted me. The interview I did wasn't good. The questions I asked weren't great. I wasn't prepared enough. I didn't do enough. There are so many moments that there have been rejections and flops and many moments of doubt, to be honest with you.

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And I really feel that sense of success and failure throughout the 150 episodes of doing this podcast. And in the midst of all of that, I learned that the only way to grow and the only way to get better is to keep coming back to it. Keep coming back to the thing that I love and that I believe in and keep trying to get better. The only way to get better

is to work at it all the time, every single day. And it has to become a daily practice in order to get better at it. You can't just expect to one day wake up and understand how to do it or feel motivated to do it. And I think that's the kicker. It's the motivation piece. Motivation isn't just going to come to you every single day. You aren't going to wake up and feel motivated to do the thing that you want to do. That is not how it works.

Most days, it won't even be there at all. And that is where the routine and the practice kicks in, because it's something you just do. The routine and the practice supplements the motivation. You aren't gonna just feel motivated to do something every single day, even though you know it's the right thing to do, even though you know it's what you're supposed to be doing and what you should be doing in order to grow. A lot of the time, it's gonna feel like you're trudging through mud to make it happen. It's gonna feel like it is impossible to make happen.

And that's why it's important to build the daily habit, to build the daily practice. And I think my understanding is that it never goes away. This isn't something that you just stop doing. It's kind of like working out. Like, working out never gets easier. You just get stronger. And I was talking to somebody recently about guys that may ask me what has changed over time. And I said, it's that I'm reaching a lot bigger of an audience and

there's just a bigger audience than when I started. Like there's more people listening, there's more people watching. And they responded something along the lines of like, but you're essentially doing the same thing that you've always done. Like you've always been doing it for the love of the game before anybody was really watching and listening. And I hadn't really thought about it, but like that's true. Like I have sat on here so many different times. Like I would do this if there was only one person listening. I would do this if there's only one person watching.

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Because I believe in it, and I believe in the mission, and I believe in the purpose, and I believe in myself. And I know that by staying consistent, staying the course, a second person will find it, and then a third person will find it. And that is what you can give yourself if you believe in yourself. If you believe that you can do it, and you decide not to give up when it's not working exactly as you had expected, or exactly as you had hoped, or you fail, and it feels like you have failed again and again and again.

If you continue to do it and you find a way to make it work and you push through every single day, it is going to be okay. Motivation is fleeting, but belief is not. Consistent practice is not. Consistent practice is the only way to put it into motion. Setting up the systems to create your success, putting yourself in the best possible position to do it is the only way to do it.

And that is how I think about growth. That is how I think about building and in success and being in pursuit of success. It's step by step, brick by brick, piece by piece, episode by episode. It's a daily practice that you have to do consistently in order to become better, in order to be great. And the thing I've learned throughout all of this is that consistency is the flex.

Being able to say that you have stuck with something over a really long period of time that you have not given up in the belief of yourself. You may have gone through moments where you doubted yourself, where you lost your faith, where you lost your belief, but through it all, you kept your head down and you stayed consistent and you continued to believe in yourself and in whatever you are doing.

and through all the rejection letters, through all of the moments where people said that they don't think so or they don't agree or they give you criticism or critiques or flat out reject you or ghost you, don't respond to you. Like through all of that, you continue to believe that whatever you're doing is worthwhile and you keep coming back to your home of whatever you love, whatever you love more than yourself. And I really love that concept that Elizabeth Gilbert laid out in her Ted talk. And I really believe in it. And it's

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It puts into perspective what I do here and what I believe about what I do here because I'm not that eloquent. I don't speak as well as she does, not nearly. And you know that obviously, because I'm always jumbling my words. But like what she said is exactly how I feel about this. It's coming back to this every single week. It's coming back to it every single day. And I just want to say thank you so much for listening through 150 episodes. It's so crazy to me that this is where it's at.

So proud of it and I'm so grateful that you're here listening and that you believe in this the same way that I do. And you also think it should exist in the world and you keep coming back after week after week and are listening through those moments where I have not said enough or had said anything and have been repetitive and have been figuring out my footing and figuring out what I want to say and what I want to do with this. And in the moments where it's been great and really successful and amazing and through the best episodes and

I just want to say thank you so much for being here and for listening and being a part of this. It means so much to me and I can't wait for the next 150 episodes. I'm so proud of what it is so far and what I continue to do here. And I'm just really grateful that you're here.

Thank you so much for listening to Guy's Guide to what should be talked about. I'm Josh, I'm 25 years old and I'm here every single week, every single Tuesday to talk about what should be talked about for guys. If you liked this episode, I really hope you did. Please like, subscribe, leave this podcast five stars, leave it at five stars, not four, three, not two, not one, definitely not one. Thank you so much, I really appreciate that. and also the Ted Talk that I referenced in this episode is linked below from Elizabeth Gilbert. She speaks much more eloquently than I do and I highly recommend listening to it. I think if you liked what I was saying about it,

You will love what she has to say. So definitely check that out. It's on YouTube. You can also just search like Elizabeth Gilbert, Ted Talk on success. If you liked this episode, I really hope you did. Please give this episode five stars and leave it at one, two, three, five stars, not four, not three, not two, not one, definitely not one. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. If you really want to about what we talked about for guys, head over to guyset.com, G-U-I-S-E-T.com. There's an ask me anything right there. You can tell me anything or ask me any questions and I'll be sure to talk about it.

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You can find daily blog posts on guyset.com. It's like an extension of what I do on here over there. Just more questions, more answers, more blog posts, more advice all on the website guyset.com. You can watch this full episode on YouTube at guyset.com. You can check out my second podcast, If You're Going On A Date This Week on YouTube on the same channel at guyset or in a separate podcast feed called If You're Going On A Date This Week. It's basically a rundown of the conversation topics or pop culture topics, things happening in music, movies, TV.

everything happening online or just in the world that you could talk about on your date or with your coworkers, with your friends, or really with anybody. It's called If You're Going to Date This Week and it's just a lot of fun. This week is episodes eight and nine. I do them every Monday and Thursday, so you can check that out as well. Thank you so much for listening to Guy's Set. Thank you for listening through 150 episodes. It's really fucking crazy and I really, really appreciate it. I'm so, so happy and excited.

Thank you so much. Listen to guys said a guy's guide to what should be talked about and I will see you guys next Tuesday. See you guys.