Week 4 / Analyzing and Balancing
The key is to enjoy the feeling of success that comes from improving in some small way . . . and then rinse and repeat, over and over again. Why? Improving feels good. Improving breeds confidence. Improving creates a feeling of competence, and competence breeds self-confidence. Success—in your field or sometimes in any field—breeds motivation. It feels good to improve . . . so you naturally want to keep improving.
Haden, Jeff. The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win (pp. 15-16). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Motivation maker
You’ve probably been in a situation where you waited for motivation to show up—and it didn’t. You made the decision to take a positive step, figured you’d feel ready and energized... but instead, you got stuck in your head. Maybe you argued with yourself for hours. Maybe something else—scrolling, snacking, organizing your spice drawer—suddenly became fascinating. And just like that, the thing you meant to do didn’t happen. Again. That’s not a personal failure; it’s just how brains work. The comfort of familiar wins out over the discomfort of something uncertain almost every time.
Take an action, but not just any action
Motivation doesn’t appear out of nowhere. As Jeff Haden puts it in The Motivation Myth, it’s not motivation that leads to action—it’s action that creates motivation. But even that’s only part of the story. Whether you feel motivated also depends on how you think about the action you’re taking and how it plays out. If the step feels doable and the experience is positive—or at least interesting—you’re much more likely to keep going.
That’s why B.J. Fogg, in Tiny Habits, connects his work to Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build Theory from Positivity. And yes, it might sound like we’re rattling off book titles like we’re trying to impress someone at a librarian cocktail party—but the point is this: small wins in areas we choose for ourselves are the secret sauce for building real motivation. And the science seems to agree.
Why we shouldn’t should
We also know where motivation doesn’t come from: it doesn’t come from guilt, shame, or doing what we think we should do. Sure, a stern warning or outside pressure might get us to muscle through a change short-term, but that’s not the kind of energy that lasts. That’s willpower. And it runs out fast.
The kind of motivation that does stick around? That’s the kind that feels good. Natural. Like something you actually want. It starts with small, achievable steps, yes—but it also comes from how you frame the experience. If it’s fun, if it makes you feel competent or aligned with your values, you’ll want to keep showing up. We talk more about this idea of a “moving toward goal” in our Why Isn’t Why Working? video. But the short version is: if you want to feel motivated and excited about change, the process itself has to feel good—rewarding, meaningful, or at the very least, not miserable.