And in this corner... Inertia

At some point, be it on the job, or in the relationship, or even in the general ‘oh this period of time is really awful and it won’t stop when Lord when is it gonna be my time?!?,’ you start to realize the story you’ve been telling yourself – about willpower, drive, ambition… might be incomplete.

I myself have said all of these at one point or another:

“I have legit zero motivation for this.”

“Things are gonna be better when… um… when I snap out of it.”

“I’m just tired!”

However… I have been inspired before. I’ve had the moments of clear-sky clarity. The random windfalls of good “do this and win” content that I connect with on a deep level. The “when I wake up early tomorrow I’m shooting out of a cannon.” I’ve had the moment of sweet, sweet calm that’s let me think…

“I’m back.”

However… (yes, again)

Days pass. Motivation fades. More days pass… and I’m back in the fugue state thinking about how to start over… again.

Eventually I had to ask if the problem was, dare I say it… me.

GASP

Spoiler alert: It’s kind of me… in the sense that it’s… my infrastructure. It’s probably yours, too.

A lot of us learn this in real-time… when the years come and you see all sorts of unexpected and unplanned things pile up in the Loss column: Career stability. Physical identity. Finances. Marriages. Travel plans. Family health. And you have to make decisions you stand by, even if it means carrying grief that sometimes buckles your knees.

Even as I began rebuilding from my own ala carte of the examples above, I kept waiting for the lightning bolt of motivation to strike again. And it didn’t strike… at least not reliably. Which is why I’m starting to believe something else entirely:

Motivation is a myth. Infrastructure is a decision.

Far from sexy, this is a kind of decision that doesn’t feel thrilling. It’s mechanical. Sometimes even inconvenient. But… it works. Because when your life is flying off the rails, you don’t need more ambition… you need rails.

So what is infrastructure? It’s the scaffolding that holds you up when your brain betrays you. It's:

• A shared calendar so you don’t have to swing which night is kid night every week from scratch.

• $20 whiteboards in the kitchen that lists this week’s dinners so you don’t DoorDash out of frustration.

• A gym bag already packed in the car so the “I forgot my stuff” excuse never even gets to show up.

• A 30-minute Friday morning block that exists every week just to ask yourself: “What did I learn this week? What needs to change next?”

Infrastructure is pre-deciding what Future You needs, and quietly laying it out ahead of time… not for when leading your way through is easy, but for when it’s not.

I used to think structure made me rigid, and now, now I think it’s the best way to find freedom in the chaos. If I’m being honest… I don’t need motivation to, say, go to the gym. I need the constraint of a window of time that fits between first bell at the school and the time-zone shifting morning meeting.

I don’t need inspiration to plot and plan aspirations… I need the reliability of a block of time to activate those ideas, no matter how I feel about it.

As I learned myself over a wild summer… I don’t need a miracle leadership role to fall from the sky. I need a spreadsheet, 3 hours, and a list of 200 contacts to reconnect with.

When we have this? We get to feel like ourselves again. Not because motivation finally arrived (DING DONG) but because we stopped… just… waiting for it.

Let’s stop waiting for the perfect wave of energy, timing, weather, clarity, astrology, and external validation to feel ready. Instead, build so inspiration isn’t the pre-req for function. When structure exists, survival doesn’t have the be the baseline.