Action begets motivation — not the other way around.

“Show up for yourself, for your work, for your dreams, for your goals every day.” — Shaunta Grimes

Hector Quintanilla, in an article he wrote about how to be motivated, says that motivation is like an unfaithful partner.

You would not depend on such a person, would you?

You have got to let her go.

An unfaithful partner is not committed to the relationship. Likewise, motivation will be present whenever she feels like it and will leave you stranded on the most difficult days.

An unfaithful partner is not trustworthy. Likewise, motivation is not reliable. So stop relying on her.

Motivation is never loyal. It will turn its back on you sooner than later. — Hector Quintanilla

Create something. You creating something need you to protect it from every distraction.

I spent many years searching for motivation until I realized that I can’t live life based on how I feel. I wasted many years waiting for the day where I will be fully inspired to begin my path of writing.

I blamed any lack of action on “Ugh. I’m just not motivated.”

This deadly assumption made me compromise on the thing that I love. By assuming that I will be 100% motivated to write one day, I was saying that “this is why I do something,” and that feeling of inspiration is my motive.

This means motivation is the source that gets me to act.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

Taking action will never happen as long as I wait around for motivation to present itself.

Because motivation is a feeling and like all feelings, motivation comes and goes.

Our feelings are incredibly fickle. They are unstable and unpredictable.

If I wait around for them, I would never get anything done.

I hope that you are creating something and that it gnaws at you. And that you sacrifice time with friends to make space for your creation.

My feelings have not demonstrated the maturity necessary to be in charge of my dreams. So, I am not going to wait around for them when they are unreliable.

I rule my actions.

So, I write every day regardless of how I am feeling. I no longer ask whether I feel like writing or not. I no longer wait for a good day or a good moment to get started or continue.

I no longer care that I am motivated or not.

The day when you have it all figured out does not exist.

Even though we know that motivation has betrayed us more times than we can count, we still wait for the day when everything feels perfect and then we can start taking action on the thing that we’ve been dreaming about since we knew how to dream.

Waiting is a form of inaction. It is not a virtue.

And we do this to ourselves — by making the same mistake over and over again – expecting things to change when we are not working on building habits around our lives.

And we betray ourselves by continuing to base our actions on feelings that are not loyal and reliable.

What’s most important is that you keep doing what you need to do, even if it’s uncomfortable.

“Habit is persistence in practice.”- Octavia Butler

To your inspirations,

Banchi