Motivation Will Betray You

Motivation is a topic that all of my clients and friends are constantly asking me about. Mostly because feeling motivated is objectively awesome. You know the feeling! You bounce out of bed as if it were a trampoline and you stick the landing, naturally. You make your bed, cook some breakfast, write down your goals for the day, and begin your newly adopted exercise routine. After all, it’s January (or February, or March…) and “new year, new you” … right? But as the days go by, you begin to slip into old habits. Maybe one morning you choose to sleep-in instead of doing your morning workout, after all “it’s only one work out”. Soon after, you don’t see the point of writing down your goals any longer, you haven’t bounced out of bed like you used to for a week. What happened to that innervated, go-get-em feeling? What changed? Where in the world did all that motivation go? Well… you might not love the answer.

It’s gone. And unfortunately, there’s no telling when it’s coming back. This is a hallmark trait of motivation; it’s fleeting. It will disappear just as fast as it arrived. It will leave you feeling defeated and hopeless. Motivation is untrustworthy. In fact, motivation is a damn traitor. It WILL betray you. If we exclusively worked on moving towards our goals when we felt motivated, we will never achieve those goals we set for ourselves. Motivation should be a tool that we use for success, instead of as a crutch. How do we do that? We need a plan. We have to understand that motivation won’t be there to help us push forwards most of the time, so we need to figure out how to put in the work without it. That’s where accountability comes in handy. Whether it’s a training partner or a personal trainer, you need someone to be there for you. Someone to light the fire under you, someone to get you off the couch, and get you moving. Having someone to hold you accountable is a game changer. So find that person!

In my personal experience, the hardest part of working out when motivation is absent, is simply starting the work out. I would find literally anything to do, including doing nothing, to avoid exercising. I would clean my house, do the dishes, walk my dog, watch some Netflix show that I don’t even enjoy… anything to avoid the work. I would make up excuses, justifying my decision to be sedentary for a day. But inevitably, one day turned into two days, which turned into a week. And suddenly, my routine didn’t include working out anymore. The vicious cycle had begun, and it was SO easy not to work out. I had to fight my own lazy tendencies to get active again. I set small, attainable goals to achieve and build off. 

Setting short term goals is key. When you set these small goals, a couple things happen; first and most importantly, these goals are achieved easily. This gets the ball rolling. Once you achieve a smaller goal, you have gained positive momentum. You get that little shot of dopamine and suddenly you feel like you can take on another small task. Small bits of positive momentum begin to snowball, which eventually manufactures motivation. Even if you are just chipping away at larger goals via accomplishing small goals, you eventually meet and surpass that larger goal without even realizing it. Most of the time people set lofty, and somewhat unrealistic goals. This sets them up for failure because once they run into any type of resistance or setback, the larger goal begins to seem unattainable. They get down on themselves and doubt starts to creep in. Insidious thoughts like “I might as well quit” start bouncing around inside their head. Smaller/short term goals might get you to that larger goal without you even realizing that you made it there. And when you do, motivation reaches an all-time high.

So now that we understand the impermanent nature of motivation, we have to game plan for failure. How can we get back on track? We need to set small, short-term goals that work towards a larger goal. We need some form of accountability, whether that is a training partner, a personal trainer, or a training log of some sort. We need to understand that setbacks will happen. Do not let setbacks derail you. Reflect on why the setback happened, and plan for similar situations in the future. Embrace failure. Learn from it. Understand it. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again with the knowledge and lessons learned from past mistakes. Remember that even if you take two steps forward and on step back, you’re still one step ahead. Keep moving one step at a time, and motivation will show up and come along for the ride.