179 - You Don’t Need More Motivation. You Need Fewer Excuses.

Why do intelligent, capable people stay stuck?

In this episode of the Getting After It Podcast, we break down the psychology behind “elegant excuses” — the refined, reasonable-sounding justifications that keep us from taking action. Most people think they need more motivation to grow in their career, improve their health, or level up their life. In reality, they’re often negotiating with themselves in subtle ways that feel responsible… but prevent movement.

I share a personal story about staying in a job longer than I should have, convincing myself that patience and loyalty were strategic. What I eventually realized was simple: no one was going to architect my future for me. Growth requires initiative.

We explore:

• Why indecision often hides fear
• How smart people rationalize delay
• The difference between patience and avoidance
• Why motivation is unreliable
• How hesitation slowly reshapes identity
• The importance of agency in career growth and personal development

Featuring insights inspired by Naval Ravikant and Søren Kierkegaard, this episode dives into how indecision becomes identity — and what it costs over time.

If you feel stuck in your career, training, business, or relationships, this conversation will challenge you to examine whether you truly lack motivation… or whether you’ve simply built a comfortable excuse.

Stop waiting.
Stop negotiating.
Move.

Keep Getting After It.

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I hope today’s episode sparked something within you to pursue your dreams and unlock your true potential. If you found value in it, consider sharing it with someone who might need that same push.

Getting After It is for those who. want to silence their self-doubt. Refuse to be owned by comfort. Understand their limits are man-made and breakable. We live in a time of constant comparison. Social media drowns us in highlight reels and overnight success stories. But what most people don’t see is the grit behind it all. The reps. The quiet mornings. The sacrifices. The failures.

You are just getting started. Keep Getting After It. 

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

Stuckness And Intelligent Excuses

Waiting For Permission To Start

Comfort, Effort, And Delay

The Pattern Job Story

No One Architects Your Future

Safer Isn’t Stronger

The Seduction Of Potential

Rationalizing Delay With Smart Language

Standards Over Motivation

The Cost Of Hesitation And Self‑Trust

Choosing Temporary Instability To Grow

Three Questions To Break The Wait

SPEAKER_00 0:01

There is a version of procrastination that feels responsible. It sounds measured. It sounds thoughtful. It even sounds disciplined. You tell yourself you're evaluating. You're looking at all your options. You're trying to see if whatever path you're going to pursue is the correct one, overanalyzing. You tell yourself that you're being patient. You tell yourself that you're waiting for alignment. Underneath all of that, you're just avoiding the move. And most people do not need more motivation. What they need are fewer negotiations with themselves. Welcome back to the Get In After It podcast, my friends. Always happy to have you here. And today's topic is going to be something that's very important to me, and it has become more important to me uh over the years. And I want to explore something that I've been sitting with recently. And it's the idea that when we feel stuck, we assume we need more drive, more inspiration, and more clarity. You know, we look at another book, we try and find the other the next book that we need to learn, another podcast, another breakthrough. And sometimes what what is really happening is much simpler. We've built a very intelligent excuse. Why is this important to me? Why have I been sitting with these thoughts? I am no stranger to making excuses. And it's been interesting because over the past few years I've really made an effort to not do that, to not um come up with excuses to postpone doing the thing. And I've shared my experience with the podcast on you know how I was waiting for myself to grow. I was waiting for uh my speech to improve, for people who told me to do a podcast, and I needed that validation from them before I was comfortable enough starting uh on my own. It's a very frequent pattern in my life, but I also believe in many other people's lives as well. Is we know that we must do something, and whatever that thing is, whether it be a physical, spiritual, personal, or professional goal, there's a lot of times because we don't want to take a move, we don't want to put ourselves out there, we don't want to actually try because that requires effort. And sometimes effort can be scary. It can look like late nights, it can look like um spending a lot of time doing something difficult with no guaranteed result. And that's scary for many people, myself included, having that idea that if there's something that you need to do and you know how much work it's going to take, that might put you off a little bit and say, oh, well, maybe, maybe I just need to wait until I'm more polished. Maybe I need to wait until I actually build a network of people so I can reach out to them and have them on the podcast. When in reality, all you're doing is pressing pause and delaying. I want to give you a relevant story, one that I've gone through recently, and hopefully it can paint a picture of what waiting with good intentions and good intentions can look like. I want to open with a story that illustrates what waiting with good intentions is. And this brings us to pattern. That's the place I used to work. Caveat, there I used to work. So that tells you where this is going. But I stayed in a role for about seven months longer than I should have. There wasn't necessarily anger, there wasn't chaos in my role, there wasn't drama. There was just this quiet narrative in my head of okay, something will open up. Like they'll see the value, and there will be a natural path for me here to progress. That's the biggest thing that I always look for in a in a career or in a job myself, in my career. But I always want something that's going to challenge me, something that is going to require me to think differently, to approach problems differently, and have that opportunity to grow myself. That's a rare thing to have in a role, and I'm very fortunate that I have been able to have that. But about seven months ago, I recognized that there wasn't much growth for me at Pattern. And I stayed with it for a long time. Obviously, that the next probably six months, six and a half months or so, I stayed at Pattern. I loved it. It was such a great place to work. It taught me so much. But at the moment, there just wasn't a next step for me. And as someone who pursues growth, someone who always tries to do their best in whatever they're they're doing, that didn't sit well with me. That is something that I didn't really appreciate in my career. Like I always want to grow, and I know you know that. Um but I convinced myself that patience was maturity and that loyalty was wisdom and that waiting was strategic. And every month that passed felt reasonable. I was waiting for that moment. I was trying to uh hopefully get something to come up. There was always a justification. I could always paint the picture of something. And one day I had to sit with something that was uncomfortable. And it was that no one was going to architect my future for me. As much as I'd like to believe that sometimes it is all on me, just as it is all on you for your future. Those executives, they were not thinking about my growth every morning. They were building their own uh priorities and managing their own pressure. Like they have a lot on their plate. And I should not expect to have them be like, oh, you know what? Brett's doing great. Let's let's roll out what his career could look like here if he stays. Like I would have loved that. That would have been awesome, but that's not how life works. Expecting someone else to construct the exact path that I envisioned envisioned was convenient because I was able to stay where I was and have that hope that oh, someone's going to do this. And it removed the risk of taking a chance on yourself, of going to another place. Um, I was very comfortable. And if nothing changed, I could still blame the system. If I stayed, I I persevered um and was able to be a little bit more stable in my in my job. But if I was to apply somewhere else, that meant I was going to have exposure. And it meant I could be told no. And it means I could misjudge the move. It meant uncertainty and waiting felt safer. But safer wasn't stronger. Safer has a habit of stalling your progress. And that's a lesson that I've I've really tried to apply in my life recently, just because there's so much that goes on. Um there's so much that goes on when you decide to take the less safe path. The one that's riddled with uncertainty, the path that not many people go down because it is hard, and they have they have a lot of work to do when they decide to go down that. Um so I did that. I did exactly what I needed to do, and I exposed myself. I started applying to other places, and um more to come on that in just a little bit. But let's talk about the subtle comfort of potential. This is something that's interesting. I actually um I did a study on uh just basically what it means for people who um who find potential seductive, as interesting as that sounds. But hopefully this will explain a little bit. Because there is something seductive about potential. Potential lets you say, I could, I will, and when the time is right. Phrases like that are more dangerous than they are helpful, because you're not putting a timeline on anything, and you're basically just saying, like, yeah, I could do that, I will do excuse me, I will do that, or I'll do it when the time is right. Again, you're just tricking yourself. Like, that's the truth behind it all, is that you are just lying to yourself. Like if you say you could, then you should. If you say you will, then follow through. And if you find that the time is not right, then start today. Like, you don't need perfect conditions to begin with whatever thing that you're trying to accomplish in life. That's a a thing I tell many runners is you do not need to be uh you do not need to be a professional athlete to run. You just need to run. You just gotta get out there and do it. And it's uncomfortable, sometimes it's incredibly difficult, but you can do it. So with potential specifically, you get to imagine yourself expanding without ever stopping or without ever stepping into discomfort that is required to do so. You don't have to do that. If you just imagine that you're growing, if you imagine you're improving, then why would you need to step into the discomfort if it's just in your imagination? I believe intelligent people are especially vulnerable to this because they can rationalize delay beautifully. You can frame hesitation as discernment, you can frame fear as patience, you can frame stagnation as timing, all dangerous spots to be in. The language becomes sophisticated, the avoidance becomes invisible, and because it sounds reasonable, it feels like you're being responsible. Interesting thought there. It feels like you're being responsible a lot of the times when you are waiting. Because you think you're rationalizing it, you think that you know you will improve, you will get better, and whenever you do that thing, you'll be ready for it. But there's no lessons learned in moments like that. Lessons are learned when life tests you. When you go through hardship and you are able to come out on the other side stronger, that is what's going to teach you lessons that last a lifetime. It's not because that you waited until everything was perfect to actually begin. A lot of the times that's not how lessons are taught. And there on another note, this is something that I found that is really helpful for this idea of um limiting your excuses and not needing more motivation. There's a line from Naval Ravicant that stayed with me, and it has for a while, but basically just with decision processes that you're trying to do. Like if you're going for a new job, if you're trying to start something new, if you're um thinking about signing up for a race, what I would say, and what Naval says, to quote him, if you can't decide, the answer is no. If you cannot decide, the answer is no. That line has weight. Because indecision feels thoughtful, it feels analytical, it feels open, but indecision often hides a quiet willingness to accept discomfort. When I was telling myself I was still evaluating, I already knew that I needed the leaf. I knew the growth I wanted wasn't going to emerge organically in my role, and I knew staying required less courage than actually moving. And that delay wasn't confusion, it was hesitation. And hesitation stretched over time shapes your identity. You just decide not to do the thing. You decide to push it off. That you'll do it when you're better. Those are all dangerous spots to be in, and you don't want to be there. Now, how does this show up everywhere? How do our excuses show up everywhere? And how do we need less motivation to actually go and pursue the things we want to? Because this doesn't just show up in our career, it shows up in training. Like you map out a perfect block, you study optimization, you research heart rate zones, you tweak your nutrition, and yet you don't start. Because starting imperfectly feels worse than planning perfectly. And that's a really important distinction to make. Because starting imperfectly feels worse than planning perfectly. Pretty accurate with how I think about things. I imagine that if I have a perfect plan, the execution will be so much easier. When in reality, a lot of the times you just need to start. You just need to begin. And going back to the running metaphor, that's a great, a great thing that I always tell people is like it when they ask me, okay, well, what should I be doing? Um, what workouts should I be doing, and they're just starting with running, I tell them just to begin. Like, you do not need to plan these types of workouts. What you need to do is actually get some time on your feet and do the thing. You don't need to map out a perfect plan. And the same principle applies to the podcast. Like, I I do I plan out my episodes, well, because I want to provide value uh on topics like this. But I'm not planning like everything hyper-specific about the things that I'm doing. Like, oh, I need to build a studio, I need to have a plant in my studio, I need to have guests on every single episode, like all these things. Yes, that would be nice. A plant would be great. Having guests on every episode would be awesome. But at the end of the day, what's important is actually sitting down and recording these podcasts. Sitting down, telling you what I think, uh, reading your comments, your feedback, everything to just try and make it a little bit better. That idea of hesitation coming up everywhere also applies to creative work. Like you refine the idea, you adjust the outline, you improve the lighting, you wait until it feels polished, and yet the first upload never happens. It shows up in your relationships. You say things like, I'll be more present once the season slows down. Here's the thing, guys, seasons rarely slow down themselves. And that pattern is consistent. The overarching theme here is that we protect ourselves from the discomfort of movement. That's really all it is. We do not want to have to take action. We want to avoid that. We want things to be given to us, we want it to be easy. And the idea that it's not going to be easy, that you're gonna have to work for it, that you're going to have to go through some discomfort is not a tantalizing idea. It's not as seductive as instead just coming up with an intelligent excuse. Because you can do that easily. You can justify all day long why you're not doing the thing. And you probably have some good reasons for it, too. But where will that get you? Where would that put you in a year and a half if you try and take the easier road every single time? There is beauty and there are lessons to be learned when you go down a path that isn't very traveled. They will show up. I would also say that motivation can be a distraction at times. It's a very interesting thing to say. I understand, but I will explain. Motivation becomes your scapegoat. You tell yourself you'll act when you feel it. And when that's things like, okay, the energy needs to be right, the clarity is strong, the spark that I had, it returns. But the people who build meaningful lives rarely wait for emotional confirmation. They operate from standards. They operate from standards. That's why I talked and I harped and I taught about standards in January. Most of the episodes, if you go back and listen to them, most of them had the common theme that standards are more important than um than goals. And the reason being is because people operate from standards, standards that they hold themselves to. And there are things you do because they're aligned with who you are, and not because you felt like it that morning. I read this thing on X that someone was basically just talking about motivation, and they said, motivation is weather, standards are climate. So the weather changes all the time, the climate does not. One fluctuates daily, and the other defines your trajectory. So that's just a few things to think about there. Is you know, what are your standards? What do they say? And if your standards are aligned with your goals, if your standards tell you that you need to take action and move, then you need to follow through. You need to actually do the thing. Now there is a deeper cost to prolonged hesitation. And it isn't just lost opportunity, it's erosion of your self-trust. Let me explain. Every time you delay something you know you should move toward, a small part of you registers it. Confidence doesn't collapse overnight, but it thins very quietly. Sorin Kirk Kirkgard wrote To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. I never heard of that quote until I studied for this podcast. And I want to read read it again, because that is a very powerful line. To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. What does that mean? Well, to dare. To act, we can say. To act is to lose one's footing momentarily. You are going to feel unstable. You are going to you know it's it's like first-time jitters. Anytime you try something new, there's always a little bit of fear in the beginning. And sometimes you stumble, sometimes you fall, but it's only for a moment. And Kirkgaard's argument here is that if you decide to not take action, if you decide to not act and you stay where you're at, you might lose yourself, which is a very scary place to be, and I've been there, and it's not good. You should work unbelievably hard to ultimately become the best version of yourself, and you should work incredibly hard to always try. Guys, there's a reason why I wear the Man in the Arena quote on my neck every single day because it is such a powerful message of just try. Who cares if you look like a beginner? Who cares if you suck in the beginning? Everyone does. Who cares if people make fun of you? It's not their life, it's yours. So why would you hesitate to do the things that you want to do because you're afraid of judgment of others, you're afraid of looking silly, you're afraid of not being the best in the beginning, when in reality you know that's impossible. You know that that's not what it's going to play out to be. There's instability in bold moves. There's also instability in prolonged avoidance. One feels sharp and immediate, and the other feels slow and dull. But one leads to expansion and the other leads to contraction. Leaving that job that I had, that comfortable, amazing job, required temporary instability. And staying required long-term shrinking. And I definitely didn't want that. I needed to get out and I needed to continue to grow. So what changed? Well, the shift wasn't emotional. There wasn't a surge of motivation. There were there was clarity. That's what I had. I stopped assuming everyone else would design my own growth. I accepted that the responsibility was mine. And once that clicked, the action followed. The discomfort was real. Do not get me wrong, it was not a great spot to be in. I was nervous. Pattern has treated me nothing but great my time there. And I was sad that I was gonna miss those relationships. I was sad that I was going to leave that company and that product. But at the end of the day, like I wanted to take a chance on myself. I wanted to see what else what else was out there for. For me. But that's relief of alignment that I got from actually applying and ending up getting a job somewhere else. But there was a lot of relief because now I know that like I am going to grow. I'm going to push myself. There might be things in your life that you want to change. You don't know how to change, and you're trying to figure that out. I came up with three questions that might be able to help you. And I'll put them in the show notes if I talk too fast. But the first is where are you waiting? Second, where have you convinced yourself that time will solve something that actually requires initiative? Number three, where does your language sound mature? But feel hesitant. Answer those honestly. Any time that I give like uh an exercise like this, do it honestly. Because if you're honest with yourself, you don't have to lie to yourself, that builds your own self-trust, and you'll have an idea of things that you can do to get a little bit better. If you removed elegance from your explanation, what would remain? Sometimes the sentence underneath is simple. I'm avoiding discomfort. And that sentence is honest, and honesty gives you power. That's why I want you to do that. You do not need another surge of inspiration. You do not need a perfect plan. You do not need perfect clarity. You need the courage to move before everything feels stable. Movement helps clarify, and waiting fogs your brain. You might lose your footing for a moment, but that's a good thing. Because you need to refuse to lose yourself over time. You cannot do that. You must hold on to that precious resource. You are so different than anyone else. You have talents, you have skills, you have things that you can change other people with for the better if you apply it correctly. And that's going to mean that you're gonna have to get uncomfortable a little bit. But on the other side of discomfort is so much growth, so much understanding of who you are. That's why I want you to try and at least push yourself just a little bit. See where that gets you. And if it doesn't get you in a good spot, let me know. Reach out to me. Say, hey, I I tried my best. I went out and I did this thing and I completely failed. Great advice, Brett. But in reality, I don't think that would be the case. I think you'd probably say something like, I tried, I failed, but I'm I'm proud that I tried. That's more like what I would think you would say. Anyways, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to listen to uh this podcast episode about how to avoid excuses, how to actually just do the thing. And it's through action. Um if this helped at all, please share it with someone else. Uh send it to a friend that might be uh in a tough spot or trying to make a change in their own life, and they might be a little afraid to do so. Please leave a rating for the show on Spotify and uh Apple Podcasts. That is a big help for the visibility of the channel and just really appreciate it. But you guys are the best. The show would not be a thing without you, and I'm deeply grateful for for everything. And until next episode, my friends, keep getting after it.