A meditation on motivation

Just move

Here’s some irony for you. I spent the weekend completely unmotivated to work on a piece about motivation. I’m not sure the exact reason for my lack of enthusiasm, but it’s probably a combination of newsletter burnout, everyday exhaustion, and general agitation over the state of the world. 

If you are prone to staring over the cliff across the existential abyss as I am, you probably recognize some of those symptoms in yourself. Maybe you’re going through something like this right now, whether it’s with running, your work, or that home improvement project that never seems to finish itself. 

You’re not alone, because it seems like many people are feeling the same thing. These are strange and heavy times. It’s only natural to lose touch with your inner drive when it feels like the weight of the world sits on your shoulders. 

When those feelings take over my psyche, I make an effort to sit with them for a while and try to identify specific root causes and possible solutions. This is an uncomfortable process, but it beats sitting around ruminating over things I can’t control. 

There are lots of ways to do this – meditation, therapy, etc. – but my primary vehicle for affecting emotional wellbeing is exercise. Running is great, but so is working out, or riding your bike, or taking a walk down to the corner and back. 

Exercise doesn’t always have to be structured, or part of a larger training plan. Anything that gets your body moving and shifts your energy from passive to active can be a welcome change. 

It’s in that space between restless anxiety and exercise-induced fatigue that a sense of calmness permeates your being and allows things to start making a little more sense. Of all the things that motivate me to run, the ability to enter that sublime headspace is one of the biggest factors.

You can’t just summon those mood-balancing brain chemicals on your own, or at least I can’t. That process requires effort, and experience has shown me that if I just start moving, good things can happen. 

Take this post, for example. I thought about bagging it entirely, but then some inner drive kicked in like it does every time I’m confronted with a blank page and a blinking cursor. Write something, anything, and the rest will take care of itself. 

That’s what 25 years of living on deadline will do for you as a writer. At some point, the motivation to start writing became hardwired into my approach. That didn’t happen overnight. It took years of experience to cultivate. 

It’s the same thing with running. Whatever it is that gets you out there, simply showing up consistently and doing the work will build a foundation that reinforces your motivation over time. When that initial spark becomes a habit, that’s when you know you’ve turned a corner.  

Motivation is not static. It can, and does, change over time. There will also be periods when your energy and enthusiasm are lacking and running or working or whatever, feels like something you have to do, rather than something you want to do. That’s OK, the trick is not getting stuck in that pattern. 

When I am feeling unmotivated, I try to come up with a range of goals that will get me back on track. They start small and nebulous and then grow larger and more defined as I start to pull myself back toward equilibrium. 

For example, starting this post with nothing, building it into something workable, and then crafting it into a piece that’s suitable to publish. Each of those steps were difficult in their own way, but none of them can happen without creating momentum out of inertia and pushing forward. 

The next time you’re struggling to get out for that morning run, start by simply getting out the door. Then focus on making it to that next street and over the bridge and through that first mile. Soon enough, you’ve accomplished something. It may not be perfect – it probably won’t – but something is a whole lot better than nothing. 

Thank you for reading this free preview of Running, Probably. If you’d like to join a supportive community of runners of all backgrounds, ages, and abilities then you’ve come to the right place. This project can only exist with your financial support, so please consider a paid subscription where you will get two posts per week about runnning, and all the things that go into sustaining a balanced approach to fitness and life.