From the Passenger Seat: Maybe You're Not Unmotivated

A woman said something to me in a coaching call recently that stopped me.

"I just feel blah. I have no motivation."

Okay. So I started asking questions.

Are you still eating in a way that feels good? Yes. Are you exercising? Yes, in fact she was working out both with a trainer and on her own. She had also recently gone through her closet, gotten rid of clothes she didn't love, and then clarified that she hadn't just cleaned out her closet. She had cleaned out practically her entire house.

And yet, in her mind, she had no motivation.

So I stopped her, because I think sometimes we have a very specific picture of what motivation is supposed to feel like.

What we think motivation is supposed to feel like

We think motivation feels like "I'm ready." "Let's do this." "This time is going to be different." We associate it with excitement, energy, momentum. The feeling on January 1st, or the first day of a new program, or the Monday morning when we've decided we're finally getting our act together.

But what happens when the excitement isn't there? What if you wake up and don't particularly feel like working out, but you do it anyway? What if making dinner isn't exciting, but you make something that nourishes you? What if you're having a difficult week and still keep some of the promises you've made to yourself?

Are you unmotivated, or have you simply reached the part of change that doesn't feel exciting anymore?

Motivation and follow-through aren't the same thing

This is one of the things I notice over and over in coaching. Women dismiss what they're doing because it doesn't feel the way they think progress is supposed to feel.

"I wasn't very productive this week." Then she tells me the seventeen things she accomplished. "I completely fell off." Then I discover she had one difficult day. "I have no motivation." Meanwhile, she's still showing up.

Sometimes I'll reflect that back to her. Listen to what you just told me. That's part of sitting in the passenger seat. When you're driving, you're watching everything directly in front of you, thinking about where you need to go next, noticing everything you haven't done yet. From beside you, I can sometimes see something different. I can see what you're already doing.

What if we changed the definition

What if motivation didn't have to mean wanting to do something? What if it simply meant deciding that something matters enough to keep doing it even after the shiny feeling has worn off?

That's a much less exciting definition. It's also a far more sustainable one, because nobody feels motivated all the time. If your habits only happen when you feel motivated, you'll spend your life starting over.

The bigger goal is a life where you don't need to constantly convince yourself to begin again. You have things you do because they support the person you want to be. Some days you'll feel excited about them. Some days you won't. Both count.

Before you call yourself unmotivated

Look at the evidence. What have you actually done over the past seven days? Where did you show up even though you didn't feel like it? What did you handle better than you might have six months ago? What did you keep doing?

You may discover the problem was never your motivation at all. You may simply be measuring progress by how it feels, instead of by what you're actually doing. Those are two very different things.

Sometimes you don't need someone in the passenger seat to tell you to drive faster. Sometimes you just need someone to point out that you're already moving.

If you know someone who's been telling herself she has no motivation while quietly doing all the hard things anyway, send her this one. Sometimes we need someone else to point out what we can't see in ourselves.

Cheers, Alison