I had an interesting discussion today with a friend regarding the emotions we experience when we have our backs against the wall. Similar sort of emotions appear right before a big deadline is due. These are the times when your body kicks into an overdrive mode and you become this extremely motivated individual, one who can accomplish great things in very short periods of times. The discussion we had revolved around how we could emulate the emotions which appear in that heightened state , and be able to motivate ourselves to reach the same state without pending deadlines or extreme situations.

A common theme that kept arising was, that in most cases, we reach this heightened state only when there is something critical on the line. It causes us to push ourselves further because of a perceived reward for completing the task, or perhaps even some sort of recognition attached to it, in most cases however, there are fairly limited options available and it often just becomes a ‘must’ for us to complete the task to get ourselves out of a hole/crisis. Creating similar circumstances is hypothetically quite difficult when these scenarios do not exist. What it all comes down to is self discipline and time management. We concluded that these are the fundamental factors which enable us to achieve more consistent results along the way.

It does all boil down to self motivation, and an inner pursuit of excellence. It seems that these heightened states appear because of our desire to reach and exceed expectations. If there is nothing pushing us to achieve greatness then the entire notion of emulating emotions, and figuring out how to bring our A game to the table, all the time, is pointless. As always, it all adds up to what we want to do and achieve in our lifetime.