I am not always excited about building my startup. But does that mean I am not motivated? Of course, I am.
Motivation is not the same as excitement. Excitement is a temporary feeling that changes hour to hour. Motivation is the steady, underlying desire to achieve a goal.
But we often confuse the two. That is why when we give up on building a habit or the pursuit of a goal, we feel that we have lost motivation.
The truth is that what we lost was excitement, not motivation. We probably never had the motivation.
Whenever I have pursued a goal for months or years, it has had an obsessive quality about it. The goal mattered so much to me that every other competing distraction faded away. I just did not care as much about other things.
So if you are not motivated, ask if you truly care about the goal. If you don’t, stop doing it. But if you do, then take ownership. You are doing it because you want it, and you have to want it really bad.
Wanting things badly enough is the key to lasting motivation – it is what makes you do the hard stuff. There is no other formula for success. This is it.
– Rajan