My life has been a bit of a mess lately, but in a good way if thats even possible.

Being in a mess forces you to clean up your act. It's a lot like hitting rock bottom, but instead of going down a hole, your just going sideways and banging off of walls. Work has been brutal to me lately and I've lost most of my motivation to work hard. Just a few months ago I was putting in 60 solid hours of work a week and steemit blogging very often. I lost that drive and toned my hours down to 40 hours a week, to which I realized that there's a lot of time in the day to complete just about anything.

With all that time, I decided to go on a reading journey to try and find out what I should do with my life.

That's where I stumbled upon Jocko Willink's book Extreme Ownership. Its the only book that I've read from front to back in years. In fact, its such a good book that I'm reading it for the 2nd time. without a doubt, I want the information to really stick in my mind so I'm also armed with a highlighter and a pen, so theres really no excuse for not internalizing the lessons learned from it.

The big question is, how did this book help me find the "spark" again? The answer is that it hasn't and it will not.

What it has taught me instead, is that I lack discipline and initiative.

I've almost given up on myself at work which results in a low drive to succeed. We've all been there, and likely have been there more than once. Low drive is a pattern that we develop and I've fallen into. It depresses the living crap out of me because I've lost most of my productivity in work. I could blame everyone under the sun for that, but the reality is that the pattern is of my own development.

I spent some time deep in thought regarding my feelings with work, and my feeling of anger at my job is less about the work I do, and more about the lack of connection with the bosses. Without that connection to my supervisors, I feel unaccomplished and unguided. I was blaming everyone at work for that and the reality is that the problem was my own. I could have sought out the mentorship I was looking for, but I choose to be angry for not having one given to me. In hindsight, that was foolish of me, but the reality was that I did not connect well with any of the senior staff because we were not similar enough for me to want that connection.

That's why Extreme Ownership was such a good book to me. I needed to OWN my problems AND solutions. I need to CHASE the solutions that will make me succeed. No one will give them to me. There's a lot more in the book about the main concepts of becoming a leader, but you don't need to lead anyone to benefit from this book.

In my own example, I am the leader of my own life, and the book has taught me to own my problems and deal with them. And to help further that, I want to voice what I'm going to do so I can read it and hold myself accountable for what I say I will do, then do it.

Thats the first step towards discipline! If you have the same problem with your job/work or whatever problem in life, then you should try reading the book and see if you can own your own problems and solutions.