Part 1: The Problem

You’re stuck in a rut.

Apathy. Lethargy. Whole days wasted away on Reddit or YouTube. Procrastinating on basically everything. Coasting by in a mediocre existence.

You don’t want to keep living like this. You want to break out—to work hard and change your lifestyle, get fit, get a better job, start a business, pursue a creative dream—but for whatever reason, it's just impossible. You can never find the motivation to stick with anything.

You decide to dig; see if you can uncover something that will unlock your motivation. You find a motivational video that describes it perfectly.

So you do all that.

And for the first time in a while, you feel a flicker of hope. You feel a little determination, a little eagerness to get to work.

So you sit down to make it happen—but then it hits you. That dreaded ugh I just don't feel like it feeling. You try to willpower through it, but not 5 minutes later, you're back on Reddit.

What gives?

….

Here’s the deal.

You're confusing inspiration with motivation. You're assuming they're essentially the same when, really, they're not.

The word motivation comes from the Latin word for “to move”. Interpret this, not as the will to move—that’s the domain of inspiration—but as the capacity to move.

All that “why” stuff is important, but it’s the stuff of inspiration. It’s the conscious will and intention to get your work done and achieve your goals. But you have plenty if that.

More is just not the solution.

Motivation, on the other hand, is the subconscious approval to burn calories to do work.

To use a car analogy, inspiration has you push on the gas pedal—and perhaps you’ll jam on it down extra hard if you have David Goggins blaring at you—but motivation… that’s the fuel injector.

That's the part way deep in the engine that you have no direct control over. It's the valve that "decides" to release fuel for combustion, which is what actually propels the heavy chunk of metal forwards.

Not saying it’s not important to get clear on your “whys”—a car won’t go fast or far if the pedal is barely tapped. I’m saying… your injector's been disabled. So you need to fix that first.

I will share the next part tomorrow
This post was taken from r/getdisciplined