Motivation is a trap. Don't fall into it.
I want to be careful here, because I'm not saying motivation is a bad thing. I think motivation is great. The problem is where people count on motivation to carry them all the way to the end of their goals.
Motivation is what starts a fire. It's a fire starter. It's not what's going to keep that fire running all night.
Why does motivation wear off?
If you've ever lit a fire, you know you have to keep piling wood onto it. The match did its job in about two seconds and then it was done. Nobody stands there staring at a spent match wondering why the fire went out.
But that's exactly what we do with ourselves.
I remember waking up back in college and starting my day with a motivational pep talk. 4am, 4:30am, headphones in, ten minutes of somebody yelling at me about discipline. And honestly? It was amazing. I'd recommend it.
Here was the problem. I thought that pep talk was going to get me through my entire day. And by 2pm, 3pm, I was going right back to my old ways. I was smoking. I was hanging out with the wrong types of people. I was watching the wrong types of content.
Ten minutes of motivation against fourteen hours of everything else. That's not a fair fight, and I kept losing it and blaming myself.
Stop looking for fuel. Become it.
Back to the fire example. If you change yourself internally, you just turned into a machine that is constantly throwing wood onto a fire. It's a never-ending machine. You don't need a fire starter. You don't need gasoline — because you are the fuel.
Once you stop relying on the fuel and you become the fuel, your life changes drastically. You don't need to rely on outside sources, because you are the source.
And here's the honest part: once you change yourself internally, you don't need motivational videos anymore. Which means the real goal is to stop needing content like this.
So let's talk about how.
Step 1: Take inventory of your life
Who are you?
This is not a silly question I'm asking to start a new chapter. I want you to ask it now. Ask it when you finish reading. Ask it tomorrow. Ask it next week.
If you've ever worked retail — I worked a lot of retail — you know what taking inventory means. You go through the store and you find out what you have, what you're missing, and what you need to get. Quantities. Gaps. What's sitting there that nobody's buying.
I want you to take inventory of your personal life. What are you missing that you need? And what do you have that you need to get rid of?
Because it's not as easy as "I want to be someone who's confident, so I'll just be confident." That's motivation. Technically, this article is motivation. So I want you to look at it in a deeper way.
Say you want to gain confidence. What do you need to get rid of to gain that confidence? Maybe you have trouble meeting people one on one. Maybe you have trouble speaking to a group. Maybe every time you talk to somebody you get in your own head.
I'm using examples from my own life, by the way. I did this. And I still do this today.
Your inventory is always going to change, too. Just like a store. You're going to run out of things. You're going to end up with too much of something you don't need.
Step 2: Change your mental environment
The second step is consistent action, and that usually means a lifestyle change. For me it meant physical movement — I moved down south with little money, no job and just a plan, because I'd spent 21 years in the same place around the same people and I kept reverting to the same version of myself.
But maybe you're in a place where you can't physically move. That's okay. There's also mental movement.
Your mental environment is more important than your physical environment. A lot of people don't think of it that way. A physical environment is cool — different scenery, different people, and that does matter. But your mental environment matters more, and it's the one you can change from exactly where you're sitting right now.
So take notice. What are you consuming? What are you thinking about? This is where meditation, focus and journaling come into play.
Go back to the confidence example. What are you actually thinking in the moment you're talking to someone new? Can you remember your thoughts in that moment?
You're not ready for this. You're going to choke. You're going to screw up. Everyone's going to laugh at you.
It's an internal bully. And it makes me laugh, because bullying is so middle school — but we deal with it every single day. When you think of it that way it's kind of absurd. I have a middle school bully living in my head. It's my mind, and there's a bully inside it.
Which means you have control.
And just like getting rid of a bully in an 80s or 90s movie, it's not as simple as saying "hey, stop that, don't bully me anymore." You're going to have to get strong. That takes work and it takes practice. That's the second step.
Step 3: Build roots
The third and final step is creating roots. Visualize this for a second.
Two trees. One is a 500-year-old oak. The other is a ten-year-old oak that's still growing. You can picture the difference. One of them you could probably kick with a lot of force and it might just snap. The other one, if you kick it with that same force, you might break your leg.
Think of this new mindset as a tree. As you start, it's going to be difficult, and things are going to want to break you. A storm comes through — one of those trees is going down.
You need to get to a level where you become the 500-year-old tree. And it's not going to take 500 years. What it's going to take is daily practice.
For some people it might take six months. For some people two years. For some people two months. But if you keep it to a daily consistency with that repetition, you will become the strong oak tree in a lot less time than you think.
Why change is reps, not motivation
If you work out at all — weightlifting, rock climbing, walking, anything — think about the repetition that's needed to grow in any sport.
When you go to a gym, they're literally called reps. I'm doing eight, nine, ten reps of bicep curls. Why? Because I want my bicep to be stronger.
You don't walk into a gym and do one curl. One rep. Then hop on the bench. One rep. Then over to the squat rack. One rep. Have you ever seen anybody do that? And if you have — they're probably not strong.
Same thing with mindset.
I'm this person. I don't do these things. I do do these things. I don't hang out with these people. I eat these types of foods.
That's one rep.
You have to be constantly thinking that. I want you to do ten, twenty, thirty reps an hour. You really want to change yourself? Do thirty reps an hour.
And when it starts getting easy — that's why you increase the weight. So it becomes harder. So you grow.
Your homework
I don't want this to just be something you read and then go back to scrolling. So here's the assignment.
Get a piece of paper, or type it out.
- Take inventory. Who are you right now? What are you lacking? What don't you like about yourself?
- Name who you want to become. What habits do they have? What do they do in the exact situation where you usually struggle? How do they act?
- Write a two-to-three sentence paragraph that states who you want to become and how you get there.
Here's what mine sounds like: I want to be someone who's confident, who can speak publicly to thousands of people. To get there, I must become someone who isn't afraid when I get on a stand. I must become someone who speaks with conviction. I must become someone who has purpose in this field.
Then, repetition. Read it every morning when you wake up. Read it out loud.
And don't just read it to read it. Read it to feel it, and read it to become.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't motivation last?
Because motivation is an ignition source, not a fuel source. It's designed to start something, not sustain it. A ten-minute video can get you out of bed, but it can't compete with the fourteen hours of environment, habits and self-talk that follow it. Expecting it to is the actual mistake.
How long does it take to change yourself internally?
Honestly, it depends. For some people six months, for some two years, for some two months. Nobody can give you a real number and anybody promising you thirty days is selling something. What's consistent is that daily repetition gets you there faster than you'd expect.
Do I have to move away to change?
No. Moving worked for me because I'd been in the same place for 21 years with the same people and the same routines. But your mental environment matters more than your physical one, and you can change that today, from where you already are. That's the whole point of step two.
What if I don't have time or money for any of this?
This costs nothing and takes about ten minutes once, then thirty seconds a morning. A piece of paper and reading it out loud. That's the entire program.
What's the first thing I should do?
The homework above. Take inventory and write the paragraph. Everything else in this article is context for that one page of writing.
Get better, together.