Waiting for motivation is ruining your life.

Have you ever spent an entire day thinking about that thing you should be doing, but keep procrastinating until you feel like you’re motivated enough? And… that moment never comes?

It’s not just some cut-and-dry experience where you feel perfectly content with waiting because you trust that motivation will come along. It’s the opposite. There is a distressing unease within you because you desperately crave this mysterious “motivation” to get started, and with every minute that passes, every hour that passes, and eventually days… It seems even more mythical. 

For whatever reason, you have a fixed belief that complete ease is a necessary prerequisite for action. Because every time you’ve tried to force yourself to get started on something, it’s left you with no progress, a worsened self-esteem, and a waste of time. But the opposite is waiting for something that only appears once in a blue moon, which makes your progress feel entirely unpredictable and perpetuates that unease you feel. 

But it doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing, the effortless ability to climb Mount Everest or the struggle of trying to run a marathon on no food or sleep. There is an in-between that is more than attainable–it’s the only way to stop this pattern once and for all. And I’m going to prove it to you.

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The thing that sucks about constantly being pulled between waiting for motivation and pushing through with temporary willpower is that it’s the same for every single task you try to go after. There is no differentiating factor between what area of your life it’s for, or how hard it is. 

No matter what it includes, you care about the task and care about the outcome. But that’s not enough to give you whatever it is you need to get started. You spend hours, or days, weeks, or even months waiting for the right moment, the right feeling, the right guarantee to get started–and that moment only comes when you’ve pushed yourself so hard that you just can’t stand the tension anymore. 

And when you finally do push yourself overboard, it’s not relief you feel, but frustration and shame. Because why did you let it get this bad? Why do you have to resort to waiting till the last minute to be able to make any progress? Why are you the only person who can’t just do things when they decide to, when everyone else seems to be living life on an entirely different planet than you? 

And worst of all, because you are the common denominator, it's easy to start wondering whether this is just who you are.

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I understand how frustrating this pattern is, mostly because I am just like you. We’re both extremely ambitious and have lots of things we want to accomplish, and we have a big vision for the kind of life that we want to live. 

And it’s not just the two of us. It’s every ambitious, goal-oriented person who has high standards for themselves, as a result of neurodivergence or conditioning or, in extreme cases, trauma.

I've noticed that the people who struggle most with motivation are rarely the people who care the least. In fact, it's often the opposite. The more a goal matters to you, the more likely you are to find yourself standing at the starting line waiting

You’re methodical in how you go about things and you want to put good effort out there no matter what it’s for. And because of that, you’ve unknowingly assigned requirements to the things you do in life. That’s not always a bad thing because it gives you a consistency and predictability you enjoy. If the starting factors are always the same, then the outcome is also always the same.

But that tendency to plan and analyze and require is exactly why you are trapped in this cycle. Because you have given action as a whole certain prerequisites to feel like you can move forward. And when motivation is one of those prerequisites, you will never be ready, and will never start. 

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Motivation isn’t as mythical as it feels. It is in fact a very real, psychological process—a balance between reward, value, and desire. But it is not a single thing that is achieved before action takes place. It is the entire dance of thinking of a desired result and everything that must happen, including overcoming obstacles, to achieve it. So “achieving motivation” can’t possibly be the first step to take place. 

Forget about understanding motivation and trying to “make it” appear, or, now that you know that it is a multi-phase process, trying to understand the sequential steps to create it. Focus on this instead: you are placing all of your energy on waiting for an outcome without any of the work. And when you continuously raise the stakes of whatever it is you want to do because you are “waiting to get started,” the task feels even more unapproachable and, unintentionally, more difficult. It feels out of your orbit. 

If you were able to place your energy on making the task more approachable instead, then you’re suddenly prioritizing variables that you have complete control over instead of seeking the outcome of an entire physiological process without initiating that process in the slightest.

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The next time you need to get something done but you have the thoughts of, “Eh, I just don’t feel like it right now, I’ll do it later,” or, “I’m just too tired, I’ll do it when I have more energy,” or something along those lines, ask yourself this:

What are you actually waiting for, that you think is motivation? Is it energy? Confidence? Certainty? A guarantee? Because most people discover they're not waiting for motivation at all. And whatever it is won’t be gained with just more time. 

If you can prove to yourself that waiting for a “better time” is an illusion, then you can pivot your thinking to what making the task more approachable could look like.

Ask yourself, what would make action feel more possible right this second? What would bring it closer to my orbit?

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And, by the way, if you're interested in learning more about the psychological reasons behind this type of thing, like how motivation works in the brain, you can join the newsletter below so you can see how it applies to your real life. I share new insights every single week.

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Your pursuit of an action does not have to be all-or-nothing. I know that’s the push-and-pull you’re used to–either complete avoidance or self-criticizing, last-minute willpower, but there is an entire world in the in-between. You don’t have to keep living like this. And accepting that it is a pattern is the first step.

The people who just get things done without a second thought haven’t magically figured this out before you. They typically have no disconnect between their desire to act and their ability to act. But somewhere along the way, yours suffered a bit of a short-circuit, if you can call it that. And so you are constantly trying to engineer something you see everyone else achieve effortlessly. But you’re focusing on the wrong thing. 

What if there is a different first step entirely? What if the first thing you do to go after a task doesn’t have to feel like pulling teeth?

That’s what we’re exploring in the linked video (WILL BE LINKED HERE on 6/17) that talks about a first step that requires zero motivation: committing to try, regardless of outcome. 

Don’t forget to subscribe HERE so you never miss an upload featuring the next hidden pattern that’s keeping you from turning your goals into reality. 

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