"Feeling Motivated" and Other Fantasies

Why do we place so much importance on the idea of feeling motivated?

When it's time to start some important routine—workout, meditation, finances, etc—we often feel the desire to first check in with ourselves.

We ask, "do I feel motivated enough to do this task?" rather than just doing it.

We're lying to ourselves and creating an escape hatch.

When the mythical feeling of motivation doesn't arrive, we claim our exit and fail the attempt. The desire to feel motivated sabotages our efforts to keep good habits.

We need a mindset shift.

These habits are important to us. We have decided they provide a benefit to our lives worth focusing on, and want them to be a regular routine. Rather than ask if we're "feeling up to it", we need to treat these as obligations.

Obligation Over Motivation

On a normal day, you don't choose whether or not you brush your teeth, or drive to work, or get dressed in the morning. It doesn't matter if we are "feeling motivated" for these tasks, we do them because they are obligations.

The fact that we have to do these obligations is just that, fact. We have to do them. So apply that mindset in other areas of our lives that we deem as important.

Motivation is fleeting, so toss it out.

Choose discipline and when the time comes, just do it.