Why We Wait for Motivation

Darling, this question is as old as time…

How many times have you not started, postponed, avoided, or blocked a task you need to do from your mind, saying, “I have no motivation to do it?”, let’s say this year?

Full transparency: I did it for probably 8.5 out of 9 months of 2026.

In this reflection, I want to address the truth behind waiting to be motivated and inspired, and consider how we can move forward even when motivation is nowhere in sight.

What makes me an expert on the subject is not being a perfect executor who has unlocked the key to self-motivation. I do not think that makes one an expert. That would just be someone who found a system that works for them and shares it.

Expertise is gained by failing, by knowing what does not work and what it takes to get things moving even when it feels impossible. And it also does not mean that all experts actually walkt heir talk every day of the year. We are all humans, and we are entitled to the same amount of struggle as everyone else out there. But the experience, the insight, and the knowledge we gain along the way help us know exactly what to do to get back on track.

Waking up tired, letting days pass doing a bare minimum, and only turning myself on fully for client calls and loved ones in my life (subject to capacity and inner resources left after client calls). I go to bed tired and don’t see how to motivate myself to do anything for my marketing.

But let me reflect out loud and take you on a journey that hopefully will help you see that waiting for motivation is not how we climb out of this hole. In fact, it is what keeps us stuck deep down in it.

Below, if you stay with me, I am not just talking about my own story, but the strategy behind it. And I will bring it into the main topic- motivation in a way that will make sense.

Now, I have been in business since 2012 (prior to that, I did a lot of digital marketing as a hobby since 2001). I have been in this online business for nearly 10 years. I have been officially an expert in my current niche for 5 years.

My last pivot into this niche was strategic, because I already knew what to do. I knew, but I didn’t know whether it would guarantee results, so it was, in a way, a period of trusting what unfolds while taking inspired action daily.

What made that year – 2022 – stand out in hindsight was a solid dedication to routine and execution. I write about it in my books; specifically, I outline how it all worked out in my second book, “On Visibility That Sells,” which shows how I approach building a discoverable and unignorable brand by focusing less on hustle-based tactics and much more on creating a solid foundation for the future, whatever it brings.

And in my case, it brought a massive loss, burnout, AI entering the market and taking away a chunk of organic traffic, then a failed marriage, divorce, hormonal breakdown under stress, and finally time to heal and rebuild from inside.

All that time, 2023-2026, the solid foundation I have built kept my income levels afloat. It grew steadily, often to my inner confusion, since no hustle was involved.

When to Act and When to Pause?

I practice the art of “Slowing Down To Accelerate,” but it is often taken at face value. Slowing down needs to be redefined depending on the stage you are in, and acceleration needs to be understood as a necessary piece of the puzzle. Not a hustle, but strategy and committed execution.

My third book, “On Frequency of You,” has a whole chapter about the dark side of the “Slow Down To Accelerate” motto. Because it is an art, and art requires mastery through deep understanding (and a lot of failing along the way, while that understanding builds).

If you are only starting to build your foundations, or perhaps you have – but with little results – then your slowing down needs to be very intentional, but brief. What I did when I prepared to pivot was scary: I stopped launching my current offers, stopped hustling on social media, and isolated myself from the noise to really feel through what felt like something that did not belong to me.

Instead, I looked into what felt like “me,” even if at times I resisted it. For example, recording videos sharing my insights.

And I questioned strategies that I have been executing that made me feel so off that they often pushed me to a complete paralysis, like sending DMs to people in my audience to “build connections,” or even some strategies that seemed fun, like re-engaging the algorithm to be visible to people by commenting or sending them messages on their birthdays. Yes, there is an actual strategy one can follow; I used to teach it too back in 2018, but on a personal, human level, it always feels false. I stopped doing it at least since the pandemic.

My birthday was recently, and out of over a hundred congratulations, I would say at least 20% were from people I have never seen engage with me. They are probably still following the “birthday strategy,” but it felt off-putting because it felt inauthentic.

Doing things that feel inauthentic literally trash our energy field, leaving less energy, motivation, or desire to do more.

The slowing down stage before building something of more value needs to happen so that you reflect, spot those activities, and question their effectiveness (critical thinking is always key)

Do not confuse this with the resistance to grow and stay in your comfort zone. Or resistance to talk about your offers (a very common block). The adult brain resists change, and it should be expected, but lovingly ignored. Pushing through is crucial at times, and this is exactly one of those times.

Then comes the scary part: narrow your offers to one specific thing to “lather, rinse, repeat,” validate whether it’s sellable, and then focus your activities on driving traffic to that offer. It is scary because it will take time and probably won’t bring results immediately, so you will need to trust the process and be prepared for outcomes that aren’t always positive.

That is a scary stage, but this is how businesses are built. First, we need to validate that what we offer is actually in demand.

But this doesn’t mean it’s a slow stage. That is why I mentioned that slowing down at this stage of business must be intentional but brief. You slow down (or stop everything) to assess, and then you start executing.

Time to Take Action

This is when the Acceleration stage begins. Acceleration is about investing. Any investment is a gamble, but with an expert business, it is rarely financial (except for mentorship or coaching for extra guidance). Most of it is time and creativity – because effective positioning these days is all about creating a core content nucleus (I call it building your Visibility Castle).

This content puts you on the map as a go-to expert, which essentially means you look like you know what you are talking about even to those who have never seen you before. It is the “shiny cover” that does the heavy lifting when it comes to first impressions, assumptions, and how engaged people become.

I am not talking about comments or likes; I am talking about how you make them THINK! And how magnetic you are to the right people as a result of strong expert positioning.

This is something that you can build easily. It’s an easy strategy, but executing it can feel very difficult. This is where most people struggle, fail, and quit.

But not all. Some fail, then get up and try again. And again. They execute day by day, month by month, keeping the focus on their work (creating content) and not relying on external feedback, applause, patting on the back, or praise.

Yes, this does not bring income right away, but that is normal for this business, and you need to make sure you have a financial foundation coming from elsewhere before this starts working for you.

This is the truth vs. the trending myths of the business coaching industry. If you have been hustling and seeing no result you are already starting to face that reality. And no, it is not you – it is that you bought into a fairy tale of freedom and don’t want to know that we all live in a yellow submarine.

Tough love, I know. But I am saying all this with love. To wake you up. To inspire you to make correct decisions.

Just a quick diversion – there is also a slowing down stage that comes after the acceleration starts delivering consistent results. It is a stage where you can work when inspired, and you do not need to rely on daily activities.

It is lovely, and it is what held me through the rollercoaster of events of the last three years… however, it also has a dangerous side – you get too reliant on passively being discovered, and you get a bit reluctant to roll up your sleeves for the next Acceleration stage.

Personally, it takes a kind of crisis and a threat to lose it all to get moving again. Even if it is not actually real. Without the crisis, I am way too laid back, which means I am waiting for motivation, and it just never comes.

Narratives That Keep Us Stuck

So we are back to waiting for motivation and failing to take action. This is a loop we can get stuck in for a very long time. And I also see that when you are in that loop, you create a certain narrative that keeps you in it, and every little “evidence” that you are in the narrative adds to you believing it yourself.

To me, it was telling everyone I am in burnout. Months after I actually climbed out of it, I still kept talking about it. Until a close friend called me out, and that was an eye-opener. I also talk about it in my new book.

Tough love works. For me. Wakes me up.

Action Over Emotion

The biggest issue with waiting to be inspired, lit up, or motivated is that it is dependent on an emotion. The emotion we cannot program, schedule, or even predict. It is short-lived. I might motivate you to break your inaction cycle today, but will you feel as lit up tomorrow, the day afterm the day after? When life interferes?

That’s why waiting for motivation doesn’t work. Anyone who has ever truly achieved anything knows it. Well, every human being to learnt to walk or talk knows it, but we do not remember because we were so young; our memory hadn’t developed yet to log the effort it took us as babies to first sit, then crawl, then stand, then walk. Months. Years of daily effort.

Do babies wait for motivation? No, because a child’s brain learns through repetition, without questioning. They just keep trying.

An Adult’s brain needs reasoning and resist the change. As adults, we have to understand that daily effort is the only thing that builds momentum, strength, influence, and brings the outcomes we hope for.

Not just in business. Health, body, any new habit, any new skill require dedication, repetition, and consistency. That only happens when we decide to build the discipline to stick with it.  

Only here can motivation help kickstart the process. But it does not have to be positive.

The best acceleration cycles for me started when things went so bad that I had no choice but to “do something about it.” I am an “away” motivation person; when I try to avoid or escape facing a crisis, springboards you into action like nothing else. Goals, on the other hand, do not fire me up at all.

So I don’t wait to be inspired; I often leave things until they start kicking me in the backside. Hard.

Knowing what motivates you (away from crisis vs. toward the goal) is a huge key to knowing what to use as your driving force.

But that drive (motivation) is short-lived, so this is when we need to develop a simple schedule with essential high-impact and high-income activities that will be executed consistently, with YOU and your needs in mind, but without making excuses that you have no time or energy. You simply drag yourself where you need to be and do what you need to do.

Then days when you are into it and inspired start happening more and more often (you will still have your off days; everyone does), but you’ve developed the discipline to follow the system you chose, and it soon becomes the norm. Suddenly you find the time (because you make it a priority), and you are no longer waiting to feel energized before you do something; you know the doing will energize you.

This is what starts in the Acceleration stage. It doesn’t come – YOU make it happen.

Shift Your Focus To Doing Your Work

The acceleration stage is only hard at the start. It requires effort to drag yourself “to work”. Your brain keeps bargaining with you for time, nagging about your ”took me three whole hours to complete this article” – but this is because it has not yet seen the evidence that this strategy works.

Not the evidence that what you just created brought clients right away –  this expectation is going to kill you. This industry does not work that way. You will never know which piece will bring in the most revenue. But I guarantee that when it does, you will be surprised, because it is likely to be something that poured out of you rather than something you strategically created; the secret is to let your insights and visions pour out, which is a buildable skill with practice and daily work.

It is the story of so many people who actually make really good money with their gifts. Gary Varnechuk and Seth Godin openly share how much content they create that doesn’t actually perform, but is essential to their process. And how nobody really read or watched their content for years at the start. I actually did scroll down Gary V’s YouTube channel to see those early videos with a handful of views. There were a couple of years’ worth of them there, and I love that he keeps those as evidence that it takes perseverance to succeed.

By the way, Gary Varnechuk is a Projector, for those of us Projectors who like to complain that we have no energy for this. We do. It is not about the energy; it is about the discipline and commitment.

I have done that too- perhps not at such a massive level financially or influence-wise, but still… The first few years of my online business, my revenue coming from it was not so consistent, but I gained the vision of how consistency can work to build something long-term, how you can build a very strong positioning and a platform for your visibility, which definitely worked for me when I pivoted into the human design and marketing niche later on. I did not have to start from scratch – I already knew what to do.

Another interesting story comes from Helena Woods, who I recently interviewed on my Visibility by Design podcast, about her 10-year journey to making money even while creating viral pieces. And how long nobody even paid attention to her content, so she had to juggle multiple part-time jobs just to survive… Now Helena runs a 7-figure business, and her discipline to show up is admirable. Not the luck, not the personality, although she is very vibrant. The discipline she has to execute consistently. She shares her experience so openly on my podcast.

So let’s wrap up by summarising what to do instead of waiting for motivation.

Focus on your work, one day at a time; keep going, keep writing/filming/creating. Keep mentioning your offers, almost mindlessly plugging them into your work. Stop chasing motivation; cultivate the discipline to make your work your daily practice.

Focus on that process and let the results be secondary to it. It truly can work, but you have to surrender to it.

And of course, I would be happy to guide you. If you feel you need some loving tough love, or to brainstorm what can work for you with your Human Design in mind, start by booking your Visibility Castle Orientation today.