3 Core Beliefs Crippling Your Happiness
By: Nick Wignall
Tags: Life Lessons, Inspiration, Mental Health, Happiness, Life

I need to feel good to do hard things.

Motivation is a funny thing. When you’ve got it — when you’re energized, enthusiastic, and really “feeling it” — it’s like you can do anything:

Go for a run at 5:00 a.m.? No problem!

Learn to play guitar? Let’s do this!

Order a kale salad for lunch instead of that burrito? Done!

Make some serious changes to my marriage? Yes, I’m up for it!

But, when you’re not feeling motivated — when you’re feeling sluggish, lazy, and apathetic — it’s as if you can’t do anything:

Literally getting out of bed and into the shower feels like a Herculean effort of will.

Learning guitar is a pipe dream I should have given up years ago.

Not only am I getting the burrito, but I’ll take extra guac, some chips, and that fudge brownie too.

And as for my marriage… What’s the point? It’ll always be like this.

For better or worse, motivation is a powerful force in our lives. It can push us to literally achieve our wildest dreams and its absence can discourage us from taking even the tinniest step toward them.

But here’s a little secret most people don’t know:

Your motivation problem has nothing to do with motivation itself and everything to do with your beliefs about what motivation is.

Most people believe motivation is a gift — something the universe generously bestows on us from time to time, and more frequently, withholds. They believe that with this gift, they’re capable of great things. But without it, they’re destined to mediocrity or failure.

Of course, it’s true that occasionally we do feel “hit” by motivation and unexpectedly energized to take difficult action. But this is only part of the story.

The relationship between motivation and action is a two-way street: Feeling good makes it easier to accomplish hard things. But doing hard things leads to feeling good.

Happy people believe that motivation is built not bestowed — that’s it’s something largely under their control.

They know that the best way to accomplish their most important goals and aspirations — from losing weight to building a satisfying marriage — is to generate a steady stream of motivation for themselves by doing difficult but meaningful things regardless of how they feel.

As you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking to yourself:

Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a nice idea — and sure, maybe it’s true — but in the moment, it’s just too hard. I tell my body we’re going for a run this morning, but my body says “like hell we are!” and rolls back under the covers.

I get it: understanding all this isn’t going to change anything. And that’s because changing your core belief about the nature of motivation isn’t fundamentally an intellectual problem; it’s an experiential one.

You need to prove to yourself that it’s possible to do difficult things without feeling motivated. And like any difficult challenge, you need to start small and work up, gradually building your confidence along the way.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you want to work on exercising first thing in the morning. Trying to jump out of bed and go for a 3-mile jog right off the bat is probably not a great idea. Instead, just focus on getting up 15 minutes earlier than usual — don’t even think about exercise at this point. Simply prove to yourself that you can consistently get out of bed a little earlier than planned. Once you can do that, get out of bed 30 minutes earlier. Then move on to doing 5 pushups first thing in the morning. Then 3 sets of five. Once you’ve got that down, try going for a walk for 10 minutes around the block each morning. Then 20 minutes. Once you’re doing that, mix in a couple 5-minute segments of jogging into your walk. You get the idea…

Happy people set challenging goals and work toward them regardless of how they feel. And they’re happy precisely because of their belief that motivation follows action, not the other way around.