What to Do When Motivation Feels Out of Reach (and pushing harder isn’t working)

“I’m worried that if I wait longer, I’m just going to get less and less motivated,” said my client the other day, right after the holidays. She’d been laid off just weeks earlier, gave herself permission to rest over the holidays, and now felt the familiar pressure to get back to “work.”

I knew we needed to slow this down for a moment. Instead of trying to reassure her with a “stay positive and trust the process” pep talk, I asked her:

“What feels most demotivating right now?”

As she talked, it became clear that what felt heavy was the idea of long, solitary days — sitting alone in front of a computer, tweaking her résumé and LinkedIn profile, applying and waiting, and waiting, and… slipping into self-interrogation as regret, second-guessing, and self-blame take over.

Motivation is fragile even on an ordinary day. After a layoff, it’s often crowded out by self-doubt, uncertainty, and the quiet pressure to “figure it out” quickly.

A lot of productivity advice assumes a stable starting point: that you’re beginning the day with enough emotional and mental energy to push through resistance. In many seasons of life, that’s true. There are times when starting the day with the hardest, most avoided task is the necessary step to move yourself closer to the desired goal.

But when someone is already demoralized — after a layoff, burnout, or a sudden rupture in routine — relying on discipline alone can backfire. You end up stacking self-imposed pressure on top of mental and physical depletion.

What I told my client is that,

Momentum to keep going doesn’t come from discipline first.

It comes from energy first.

We know that we get energized from physical activities.

Just recently I heard about an entrepreneur in Australia who woke up dreading a task she’d been avoiding for days. She knew she should do it — and felt the familiar guilt that comes from not wanting to.

Instead of disciplining herself into “productivity”, she went… surfing.

An hour later, she came back energized and finished the task in two hours (which by her own admission would have taken her at least five had she stayed home and tried to grind through it).

But what if you can’t go surfing, or walking, or do something physical to reset your energy? What if you need to rearrange your workday to create momentum in a different way?

I told my client what I usually recommend to everyone I work with: start your days with activities that put you in your state of flow and energize you.

And I gave myself as an example. I structure my days so that I begin with something that excites my mind and creates momentum — a coaching conversation, developing an idea, working on a piece of content that I can’t wait to share. Like in surfing, once you catch that wave of energy, it carries you forward and even the more tedious tasks don’t feel as daunting.

Then I turned it back to her.

“What usually gives you energy?”

She didn’t have to think long: Writing does. Talking to people does. Exchanging ideas with people does.

So we talked about building her days around that reality instead of disciplining herself to browse LinkedIn Job Postings first thing in the morning.

You don’t motivate yourself by pushing harder. Forcing yourself forward when you’re already depleted isn’t discipline. It’s self-erosion.

Real motivation comes from within.

May your 2026 be guided less by discipline for discipline’s sake and more by the kind of energy that makes forward motion feel genuinely enjoyable.