Motivation Isn’t Enough On Its Own, Not Even Close

“If you want it bad enough, you can achieve it!” Really? Awesome advice dude.

The statement, in and of itself, isn’t wrong, but it’s missing context. We all want to change our lives. But in order to do that, we have to contend with the psychological forces that get in the way.

Your brain isn’t wired to help you achieve your highest aims in life. Often, it’s wired to create the exact opposite effect.

Achieving insane goals is an uphill battle. It’s an efficient process rife with pitfalls. And you have to act in an abnormal way to pull it off.

The bottom line — don’t beat yourself up a ton because it’s hard to overcome your wiring.

You’re doing the best that you can right now and you could be doing more. Let’s take a look at how to achieve the doing more part.

The Elephant and the Rider

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt came up with the phrase “Elephant and the Rider” in his book The Happiness Hypothesis.

The elephant and the rider analogy describes your conscious and rational mind vs your subconscious mind that’s driven by a lot of deep-seated emotions and automatic responses.

Compared to the rider, the elephant is huge. Compared to your conscious mind that logically knows what to do, you have to overcome the deep foundation of your mind that wants something else.

That’s the issue. We have competing wants. And sometimes we want things that provide a level of comfort, but keep us from reaching our long-term goals. The subconscious wants to keep us stuck. So we must identify and deal with them.

Safety and certainty — You can add this underlying subconscious want to basically every problem you deal with. Yes, you want that long-term goal but you also want to avoid psychologically painful situations. And the anticipation of those situations causes fear. It helps to understand that the anticipation of those events almost always feels worse than the reality of them.

The need to fit in — In the book Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect, neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman cites studies that show that we register social pain in the same part of our brain that registers physical pain. Almost more than anything, you want approval and you want other people to like you. To combat this, accept the fact that disapproval and rejection are par for the course. You will face social rejection in the pursuit of a meaningful goal. No way around it.

The need for familiarity — Even though you want to level up your situation, you want to remain who you currently are because making sense of the world makes you feel good on a subconscious level even though you don’t actually like the situation you’re in. A simple remedy for this — consider the fact that the devil you know isn’t necessarily better than the one you don’t. Have you ever considered that?

I could go on here. All of the things we tend to want usually come through the process of somehow getting our higher nature, our true wants, to win the battle against our lower nature, the subconscious wants.

Not only do you have to win this battle once, but you have to win the battle over and over again until you get what you want.

There’s no magic trick that can help you close the gap between your thoughts and actions, but there are some reminders and strategies you can try to implement.

Strategies and Frameworks for Overcoming Your Lower Nature

So you want to walk through the fire and make it past the psychological pain it takes to change your life in a major way. The good news? You will get better at this process over time. I don’t really have to force myself to write. I’ve been doing it for years and my confidence level is much much higher than when I started.

Once you have a foundation built, it’s easier to build on top of it. The initial period, the short term, is where you’ll struggle the most. The rest of the path you’re on is literally a matter of time.

Here are some things to remember, insights you can use while you’re on your way:

Action cures anxiety — Once you get into the act of doing something, it’s not nearly as hard as you thought it’d be. I remember giving a talk in front of 1,000 people. I was petrified, but a few seconds into my speech I felt fine. I got a laugh from the crowd and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.

Fear = go — Instead of looking at fear as a sign to hesitate, look at it as a trigger that you must follow through with the action. Nothing worth having comes without feeling afraid first. You wouldn’t feel good about the accomplishment unless you felt some trepidation to start with.

Allow emotions to flow, don’t repress them — Psychologist and spiritual teacher. Dr. David Hawkins teaches a method called letting go. In short, instead of avoiding certain emotions, e.g., anxiety, allow yourself to feel them fully. If you do that, it can pass. Instead, most of us continue to repress our emotions, which just makes them stronger.

Rituals and habits are crucial — Doing something at the same time, in the same spot, for the same duration, can make something that was once difficult extremely easy. Time-blocking is one of the most basic yet foundational principles I’ve ever learned. I built a six-figure business from a 1–2 hour time block repeated over years.

Always remember this — You’re going to die. Contemplating your future death doesn’t automatically inspire you to act, but it’s useful to think about over and over again. In the grand scheme of things, your short-term feelings don’t matter much at all, but it’s hard to keep that bird’s eye view when you’re in the thick of life. Try anyway.

Look, I know you know these things already. I know it’s hard. I know words can only do so much. This is why I’m here to remind you again, and again, and again.