June 5, 2025- Stop seeking motivation

“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”

~William Blake

Motivation is a feeling we chase. We want to create a burning desire to want the things that we already claim to want. Motivation doesn’t work that way. Motivation chases us, not the other way around. Motivation is a feeling we can only work to restrain, not to create or enhance. Motivation shows up when it wants to. Like all emotions, it is merely a visitor. It may take residence in the guest bedroom for a while, but it will not live with us forever.

If we are looking to build something more sustainable, motivation is not what we seek. Habits can live with us forever. Habits can come with us when we travel. Habits can show up when motivation has left the building. Habits create behaviors that feel inevitable, more than they feel driven.

When we try to determine our behaviors through motivation, we need to hope that our desire to do the thing that serves us is stronger than the desire to do the thing that doesn’t. But hope is not a plan. 

If we decide what we will do ahead of time, practice doing it at a particular time and place repeatedly, and remove obstacles to make future repetition even easier, we can build habits. Then, our stated desires (the ones we are willing to admit to) can match our behaviors. We will follow through on our intentions, not because a feeling of motivation magically showed up when we needed it, but because we engineered a beneficial behavior into our lives.