Motivation comes after action
Today I’d like to share a piece of writing from the not-so-distant past that I think about almost every day. I’m not entirely sure how I first ran across it; it’s not from a corner of the internet that my habitual paths travel through. It’s really helped me in the years since, though, and I’ve revisited it many times. I thought that as we enter the Winter of Our Discontent it might help some of you too.
Here it is: “Breaking the Low Mood Cycle,” a guest post on Captain Awkward by a writer called Elodie Under Glass. It’s about what low moods are, why we get trapped in them, and how to escape, informed by cognitive behavioral therapy techniques from a course the author took. As the post makes clear, it’s not about clinical depression or severe mental health issues. It’s about the normal, everyday habits of thought and behavior that, when accumulated over a lifetime, tend to become mildly soul crushing.
Foundational to understanding the low mood cycle is understanding the mood cycle, in which, as Elodie writes, “Thoughts influence behavior, which influences outcome, which in turn feeds back into your thoughts.” When you’re in the low mood cycle, that can look something like this: you have the thought (again quoting from the post), “I am a bad person because I never do anything,” with leads to the behavior, “So I have no motivation to do anything,” which creates the outcome, “I don’t do anything.” Which, in turn, walks you right back to the thought, “I am a bad person because I never do anything,” and the cycle continues. (The post itself includes a lot of hand-drawn diagrams and cartoons to illustrate various mood cycles, which are cute and helpful.)
If you can see your low mood as a cycle, rather than a static and natural state, you can intervene. You can step in to break it. The best off-ramp to a better mood comes when you get to behavior. The low mood cycle encourages the behavior of “nothing.” The off-ramp is “behavioral action”—literally doing anything at all, especially really small and accessible things. Achievable goals, if you will. So you have the thought, “I am a bad person because I never do anything,” but then you, you know, do something—wash the dishes, take a walk, write in your journal, paint your nails, whatever—and you interrupt the cycle that leads you back to that destructive thought. Because now you aren’t a person who never does anything. You’re a person who just did something!
Here’s where we get to the line in the post, originally imparted by the teachers of the course the author took, that literally took my breath away the first time I read it: “Motivation comes after action.”
Think about that.
Motivation comes after action.
Motivation.
Comes After.
Action.
MOTIVATION COMES AFTER ACTION!!!
This is so completely contrary to how we are taught to think. Motivation is supposed to inspire action, right? You can’t take action without motivation! It’s only natural that if the low mood cycle has sapped away your motivation, your capacity for action will also vanish. Oh well. I guess you’re stuck being a bad person who doesn’t do anything. Still. Again. Forever.
That, my friends, is a lie. I know!! I couldn’t believe it either!!! But the truth is, you don’t have to be motivated to do a thing. You just have to do the thing, a thing—the tiniest, most insignificant, easiest thing—and your motivation will bloom. You will feel accomplished instead of drained. You will be a person who does things. And a person who does things can keep doing things.
An example. Eighty percent of the time or so, I have no idea what I’m going to write in this newsletter before I sit down to write it. I don’t want to get started, because I have no idea what I’m going to say. And then I start, and somehow I figure it out. I forget, usually very quickly, that I didn’t feel like doing it. Sometimes I like what I come up with better than other times. Sometimes, surely, you like what I come up with better than other times. But once it’s done, it doesn’t really matter. I wrote something, which means I am a person who writes, which means I can write something else tomorrow. Even if it’s just for ten minutes. Even if I have no idea what it’s going to be. Even if I don’t really feel like doing it.
Now this next part is important. Embracing “motivation comes after action” doesn’t mean that taking the action will be easy. It doesn’t mean it will ever feel good, or that you will ever want to do it. In fact, it kind of means understanding that you will never want to do it, whatever “it” is. There will be discomfort and friction when you start the action, especially if you’ve been in the low mood cycle for a while. That’s fine. That’s part of it. The initial discomfort is not a sign that you should stop. I have a hard time remembering this—hello perfectionism! Hello procrastination! My old friends, visiting again!—but it’s absolutely crucial.
“Motivation comes after action” isn’t a recipe for uncomplicated ease and contentment. It won’t fix the structural problems we live with and inside. It won’t help you win at capitalism or escape racism. It won’t resolve a severe mental health crisis, or cure a chronic disease. It won’t protect you from illness, loss, and grief, especially not during a fucking global pandemic. All it can do is help you show up for yourself and for your life. Showing up—it’s the only thing we can control, and it’s the thing no one else can do for us. It’s the hardest thing in the world, and it’s entirely within our power. The next time you’re feeling empty and absent—and trust me, that time will come, and keep coming—I hope this helps you see a path out of the low mood and back to yourself.