A Key to Life: Showing Up—Even When You Don't Feel Like It

Forget the law of attraction, think about the law of action instead

One of the biggest misconceptions is that top performers are always motivated and inspired. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Olympians, award-winning artists, and successful entrepreneurs do not wake up every morning raring to go. They struggle just as much as the next person not to hit the snooze button.

I know this struggle too.

If I had to be motivated every time I sat down to write, there would be hardly any writing. If I had to feel ready to crush it every time I trained, I would have done 18 workouts last year, not 260.

Getting over one’s reliance on motivation and inspiration is an essential part of performing your best, and honestly, living your best too.

We think we need to feel good to get going, but often the opposite is true: we need to get going to give ourselves a chance at feeling good.

Behavioral Activation

First developed in the 1970s by the clinical psychologist Peter Lewinsohn as a way to help people work through depression, apathy and negative moods, behavioral activation is based on the idea that action can create motivation, especially when you’re in a rut.

To be clear, this is not about trying to think positive thoughts, a mantra that became a pillar of the self-esteem movement last century, with mega-best-selling books such as 1952’s The Power of Positive Thinking arguing—we now know, falsely—that if you just think positive thoughts and suppress negative ones, you’ll gain health, wealth and happiness.

If anything, research has shown that those strategies often backfire: The more you try to change how you feel, the more stuck in your current mood you’re likely to end up. As much as you might want to, you cannot control your thoughts or feelings.

One of the hardest but most important practices is to realize that you are not the stuff inside your head or the feelings that are moving through your body. You are the awareness that decides what to do with the stuff inside your head and the feelings that are moving through your body. The ability to choose which thoughts and feelings to pursue and which to leave behind is key to everything.

When you feel down, unmotivated or apathetic, you can give yourself permission to think those thoughts and feel those feelings but not dwell on them or take them as destiny. Instead, shift the focus to getting started with what you have planned in front of you, taking your thoughts and feelings, whatever they may be, along for the ride. Doing so gives you the best chance at improving your mood.

It’s the opposite of the law of attraction. It’s the law of action.

The Law of Action

It can be helpful to think of the initial oomph required to show up and get started as activation energy. Sometimes you need more, and sometimes you need less. If anything, the more you get going, the easier it becomes. It just takes some extra work to overcome the initial stasis and friction—it can feel like the laws of physics apply to our psyches, too.

This isn’t to suggest that you beat yourself up or give yourself a drill-sergeant lecture every morning. Indeed, a key step in the strategy is accepting its imperfections. Many of us are operating in less-than-ideal circumstances: dealing with illness, financial stress, work anxiety, a lack of child care. Overcoming the inertia of stasis requires fierce self-discipline—and a fierce compassion for oneself. You may think of these two qualities as opposites, but they are not. Research shows that being kind to yourself during challenges can increase resilience and strength. If you want to be a fiercely disciplined badass, you’ve got to learn to be kind to yourself too, lest your fierce discipline will not be sustainable.

A mantra I use when I’m struggling with low activation energy in my own life:

“This is what’s happening right now. I’m doing the best that I can. Just get going, and see what happens.” I remind myself that sometimes the kindest thing I can do for myself is also the hardest thing to do—and that what seems hard today might just make tomorrow feel a bit easier. If I just get started, I may be surprised at how fast things turn around (and oftentimes, they do).

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t meant to be a white-knuckling approach to life. There are things we can do to support motivation and inspiration, such as reading good books, spending time in nature, and surrounding ourselves with energizing people. But ultimately motivation and inspiration operate on their own schedules, so there is no point of becoming beholden to these states. When you catch a good wave, ride it. But don’t despair—or let it become destiny—when you don’t.

“Don’t wait for the muse,” explains the best-selling author Stephen King in his memoir, On Writing. “Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon, or seven ’til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up.”

Showing Up Is Simple
(But Simple Does Not Mean Easy)

There is no substitute for showing up. No secret. No supplement. No hack. You just show up, get started, and give yourself a chance. It’s as simple and as hard as that.

The good news: an ability to show up is not an inherited trait, not something you are born with. It’s a skill you build. And like any other skill, it strengthens with practice.

Instead of relying on motivation or thinking that you require a David Goggins hype speech to get going, simply remind yourself that motivation follows action, not the other way around—and that action has an inertia that builds upon itself.

You don’t need to hit home-runs. You just need to show up and put the ball in play. Over and over again.