The Motivation Myth

There is only one recipe for gaining motivation: success.

Real motivation comes after you start. Motivation isn’t the result of hearing a speech or watching a movie or crisping your soles. Motivation isn’t passive; motivation is active.

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.

You don’t need motivation to break a sweat. Break a sweat and you’ll feel motivated.

The act of getting out of the house to go for a jog is often harder than actually running the five miles you planned.

the best way to succeed was to develop a routine and then stick to that routine.

If you want to stay motivated, if you want to stay on track, if you want to keep making progress toward the things you hope to achieve, the key is to enjoy small, seemingly minor successes—but on a regular basis.

Success has less to do with hoping and praying and strategizing than with diligently doing (after a little strategizing, sure): doing the right things, the right way, over and over and over.

When you consistently do the right things, success is predictable.

We want to matter . . . but when we focus solely on mattering to other people—when we focus on seeing the reflection of our worth in the eyes of others—the difference that feeling makes in our lives is often fleeting.