Action creates motivation, not the other way around. Start with tiny, specific habits: sit at your cursor for 20 minutes, do 10 push-ups each hour, practice a language for five minutes. Small consistent actions generate the emotional responses that fuel bigger goals.
Hey, what's up? I'm here in my gym, a fitting place for this video. Author Mark Manson has written about the idea that action creates motivation, and I agree. Action creates motivation. As a matter of fact, Mark's mantra to just do something is a surprisingly simple yet powerful strategy to get motivated. That's because action creates motivation. Mark says action isn't just the effect of motivation, but also the cause of motivation. So do this.
Think about this do something principle being based on the idea that your present actions create emotional reactions that inspire and motivate your future actions. Okay. Your present actions create emotional reactions that inspire and motivate your future actions. In other words, action leads to inspiration leads to motivation. For example, if you lack the motivation to adopt or drop any given habit or to make any other important change in your life, then just do something already and then harness the emotional reaction to that action as a way to begin motivating yourself. It's called showing up. So you want to write a novel this year? Show up every morning in your office and just sit in front of that blinking cursor with the word processing document open and do that for 20 minutes. ChatGPT free. You might type a paragraph or a sentence or just a word. You might just weep softly. But if your experience is anything like mine, you'll rarely walk away from those 20 minutes having produced jack squat nothingness. However, you have to show up. You want to pack on 10 pounds of muscle this year, don't defeat your motivation by committing to a thrice weekly two hour barbell suffer fest at the gym. Instead, figure out a way to just show up and to show up simply and consistently. Like dropping and doing 10 push ups at the beginning of every hour of the waking day for a full week. You can do that 10 pushups. There's far less cognitive resistance to that approach, and it's pretty unlikely you won't show up to just a few seconds of push ups performed regularly. Unless you're on an airplane, in which case do air squats. Slacker. Have a dream to travel to France? Well, download a language learning app to your phone and commit to just five minutes of French language practice per day. You just showed up. Soon you'll be shopping for a ticket to Paris, learning how to make a Croiss Marco Soie sandwich for lunch, and sipping a tiny espresso with your pinky out. The great secret that every artist and admirable creative knows is that the first step is showing up. You want to play the piano? Sit down at the piano bench to paint stand before an easel to dance, turn on a song, and stand in front of the stereo. So take a deep breath and then just do it. Just show up. So what's a goal? Maybe an intimidating one you've been avoiding because getting started seems so big and scary. And what small, less intimidating, achievable action can you take today to begin to allow you to achieve that goal and just show up? That action will give you the inspiration and the motivation that you need. So go do it.
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