Waves of Motivation

Waves of Motivation Non-Ordinary Living Podcast The Motivation Myth Today's episode is about waves of motivation — or, more honestly, what to do when you don't have a single scrap of it. You wouldn't be alone in that feeling. Motivation is difficult. It's tricky. But I think that's largely because we've got our perspective the wrong way around. A friend of mine — a surfboard shaper who surfed just about every day — said something to me years ago that I've never forgotten. Getting to our local beach took some effort. You had to drive there. Even I thought, "I'm not sure I could do that every day." So I asked him how he managed it. He said: "The only way to get motivated to go surfing is to go surfing." It's one of those things you hear and think, yeah, that kind of makes sense — but it doesn't really land. It took me years to understand he was right. The Role of That Initial Burst of Energy We've all been there. Best intentions the night before — alarm set, exercise gear ready, committed to the new routine. Then the alarm goes off and the last thing we want to do is get up. That initial excitement when we decide to do something new — start exercising, change a habit, begin something — isn't there to carry us through the whole process. It's there to tell us we're on the right track. It's a signal, not a fuel source. Once that feeling has done its job, you're back to neutral. Back to zero. And that's where most people get stuck — waiting for that original feeling to return before they act. If you think about it in terms of energy and systems, this becomes clearer. If something didn't feel right, you wouldn't have set the intention in the first place. Your mind and body have already agreed. The decision's been made. Now you just need to attach the feeling to the action — and that's where we tend to go wrong, because we're looking for the wrong feeling. What Inspiration Actually Feels Like For me, inspiration is just an idea. Ideas, by themselves, don't come loaded with energy. They're neutral. It's only what we project onto them that generates emotion. I swim every day. I love it — it's exercise, meditation, everything. But there are days when that immediate burst of enthusiasm isn't there. The idea to go swimming arrives quietly. No fanfare. If I meet that idea with resistance — "ugh, I don't really want to" — I've already loaded it with negative charge. Now I have to work just to get back to zero before I can even think about moving forward. Same problem if I try to force it. Either way, I'm fighting my own system. This is where I stumbled onto something. It came about, honestly, during a period of pretty deep depression. An idea would pop into my head — something small, like taking a cup to the sink — and I'd just do it. Not with excitement. Just movement. And it was easier than I expected. I started playing with it. Instead of getting up immediately when the alarm went off, I'd lie there and wait — not for excitement, just for an idea. And when it arrived, I'd move with it. No deliberation. Inspiration means to breathe in. So I'd breathe it in, and as I breathed out, I'd move. Catching Waves Not all waves are equal. In surfing, there are set waves — bigger, more powerful, arriving in their own rhythm. You can let smaller waves pass. You can wait for a better one. The practice is learning to read the rhythm and choose well. Motivation works the same way. Some inspirations carry more weight than others. It's okay to let one pass and wait for the next. But when a good one arrives, you move — before your mind has a chance to negotiate. The Horse Story — Don't Fake It When I was working with horses, I was told something that stuck: a horse doesn't mind what mood you're in, but don't fake it. The horse needs to know where your energy actually is so it knows how to respond. If you go in agitated and try to perform calm, the horse picks up the mismatch and gets confused — you're saying one thing, your energy is saying another. So I'd go in however I was. And interestingly, by not faking it, by just connecting honestly, the horse would match me and we'd both settle. Same principle applies to motivation. Don't look for the heightened state. Don't try to manufacture excitement. The heightened state may come — and it may not — and it doesn't matter. What matters is just moving. Movement Creates the Feeling Here's the key: by moving, and bringing your awareness to that movement, you create a feedback loop. Emotion is just energy in motion. Once you start to generate movement from neutral, based on an inspiration your system has already agreed to, it becomes self-perpetuating. Think of it as acoustic rather than amplified. You're not looking for an electric, amped-up version of feeling good. You're looking for just slightly above neutral. That small lift is enough. It's real, it's sustainable, and it builds. Success, in this sense, just means to keep going. Not a destination. Not a peak state. Just continuing — and letting the momentum build from there. Some days I don't even fully realise what I'm doing. The inspiration to swim arrives, and I'm already putting things in my bag and walking out the door before I've consciously decided. That's what it looks like when it works. Stripping It Back to Energy If you're not feeling it, strip away all the words, the meanings, the judgements, the expectations. Whatever you're feeling — just sit with the energy of it. Remove the label and it's just energy. Connect that energy to what you're doing, and it creates a feedback loop. Feeling good doesn't mean arms in the air. It means you're a little above neutral. Nothing's wrong, nothing's forced. You're moving with the moment. That's what we're aiming for. The key is to slow your rhythm down to match the moment. If something's going to take ten minutes, just be with that. Don't rush it. The moment you rush, you lose your connection to the wave — and then the motivation disappears, because you've outrun it. The Practice — Try This Sit quietly. Don't force anything. Wait for an inspiration to arrive — it might be small, a cup of tea, a short walk. When it does, move with it in a relaxed, calm state. Don't aim for excitement. Aim for neutral-plus. Become aware of your movements. Find the rhythm that connects you to the moment. If you start to drift, bring yourself back to neutral. If you lose the inspiration entirely, stop — and wait for it to return. If your system still wants this, it will come again. You don't have to act on every inspiration that comes. This takes practice. But here's the good part — the moment you start engaging with this process, it compounds. It gets easier and easier. Don't put expectations on it early. Expectations set a false level. If you don't hit it, you think you've failed — but you haven't. You've just gotten ahead of the moment, or fallen behind it. Both are fixable. Just come back. The NOL Connection This is exactly what we work on in Non-Ordinary Living — learning to come back to the Neutral State as the foundation of everything. Until you can do that, you're always fighting the accumulated charge in your system: the stress, the anxiety, the background noise. All of it clouds your ability to sense what your system actually needs. Come back to neutral, and your capacity opens up. You can sense the waves. You can catch them. And you can start to move in a way that expands rather than depletes. If that sounds like something worth exploring, head to thenonordinaryliving.com. Until then — play with this. Sit and wait for inspiration. Catch the wave. Move without expectation. See where it takes you.