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The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane
Real Conversations about things that Matter
All things life and health - physical health, nutrition, mindset, mental health, connection plus society and culture with Fiona Kane, experienced and qualified Nutritionist, Holistic Counsellor and Mind Body Eating Coach
Frank discussions about how to achieve physical and mental well being.
I talk about all things wellness including nutrition, exercise, physical and mental health, relationships, connections, grief, success and failure and much more.
Some episodes are my expertise as a nutritionist and holistic counsellor and some are me chatting to other experts or people with interesting health or life stories. My goal is to give you practical and useful info to improve your health and tidbits that you may find inspiring and that may start discussions within your circle of friend/family.
The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane
What Is Motivation? The Real Truth Behind How It Actually Works | Ep. 141
What is motivation? In this episode, Fiona Kane breaks down the truth about how motivation really works, and why waiting to “feel motivated” holds you back.
She explains why motivation actually follows action, how discipline creates momentum, and why small wins matter more than perfection.
If you’ve ever struggled to stay consistent with healthy habits, goals, or routines, this episode gives you a simple, science-backed way to understand motivation and finally move forward.
Outro: Music by Musinova from Pixabay
Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/
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Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection podcast. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I'm talking about the truth about motivation because I think people get a lot of things mixed up about motivation. So I think it's worth addressing. One thing I hear is I hear a lot of people saying, oh, but I'm not motivated or I have no motivation or how come you're so motivated or how come that person's so motivated? Like it just comes out of thin air. It doesn't work that way. So I thought it's worth addressing and explaining about where motivation comes from. So motivation doesn't just come out of nowhere, it doesn't just happen. It actually follows action. So you don't, you know, wait around until you get motivated and then you do your thing. You take action. And when you take action, that gives you mo gives you motivation. Because when you take action, you get momentum. So action has to come before motivation. You don't have motivation to go to the gym. You go to the gym and then you feel motivated because you went to the gym, or go for the job, or go for the walk, or do whatever the thing is. But you need to actually just get out and do stuff. That's what creates it. Motivation doesn't just come along. It might, in some cases, for some people in some situations, but largely, especially motivation that involves hard work, changing your life, doing something different. It doesn't come out of nowhere, it comes from doing the thing. So it follows action, not the other way around. So you're not just going to suddenly get motivation. You just have to start doing something. Do anything, just start moving forward. Discipline beats motivation every single time. So discipline is when you say, look, I don't feel like doing it. I'm not feeling motivated, but I'm just going to do it. I'm going to turn up every day at this thing, or whatever you've agreed to do, whatever the thing is that you want to do, you just make an agreement with yourself and say, okay, I'm going to do it this many times. And you just show up, no matter how you feel, no matter whether you feel like it or not, you just show up. Discipline will always be, you know, just discipline to just do the thing, do the hard work, discipline to do the work is more important than motivation. Because like I said, motivation is not just going to come along, but just having discipline and saying, all right, I know the only way I'm going to achieve anything is by being disciplined at it, doing over and over and over again, just working diligently at something, moving forward, moving forward, moving forward, and being sort of diligent about it and saying, okay, I just know I need to keep doing this. That is what uh will keep you motivated. That's again, the motivation doesn't come out of nowhere. The motivation comes from actually doing the thing. Small wins create big momentum. And I've talked about this before. So momentum, like I said, momentum doesn't come unless you actually start doing something. You don't get any momentum from sitting around and just hoping you'll get inspired. Moment happens when you start doing something. You start writing the book, you start looking for work, you start going to the gym, whatever it is, you get the momentum from starting. When you start something, it gets momentum. And as it builds momentum, it gets faster and faster, or goes more and more forward in whatever direction it needs to be going in. And that is why small things matter. The just showing up matters. Just showing up no matter what, that matters. Just writing, even if you write badly, or starting, even if you start badly, doing something, even if you get it wrong initially, that's why it matters. Because you'll start to get the small wins. The small win might be just showing up in the first place. The next win might be doing like this much of something, a tiny little bit of something. But those small wins matter because those small wins will make you feel good about yourself. This has actually been documented in um, he wrote about it in uh The Frogs. What's the book called? Uh Eat Frogs, eat something about eating frogs. I can't remember, it's not just dropping it, drop dropping out of my head. But there's a really good business book about eating frogs. I think there's another word in it, but anyway, about eating frogs. And he he refers very much to this research that sort of that says that when you when you identify, when you notice your small accomplishments, the little things, it gives you momentum and it gives you momentum because you go, oh, okay, I did something. I good on me. I've done something, good, you know, and you're proving that you're showing up for yourself, you're proving that you're showing up, you're proving to yourself that you're reliable, you're proving to yourself that you can trust you. So all of those things combine to make you feel good about yourself, to make you feel positive, and then you start to get more motivation and you start to get momentum. So it really, really is important to celebrate the small things. So rather than, oh my God, I've got 97% of the way to go, I've only done 3%. I'm the worst. It's like, wow, I've done 3%. That's 3%. That's you know, it's better than what I was last time when I was 2%, and it's better than when I was 1%, and it's better than when I was none percent, right? So it's just celebrate each percent rather than just you know complaining that you haven't achieved and got got wherever there is. Because again, that's really, really important part of this is you just celebrate the small things along the way. The small things matter because they proved to you that you can trust you, they proved that you're heading in the right direction, they give you motivation, they give you momentum. That's where the momentum comes from. You're not gonna always feel like it, but you just have to do it anyway. You just don't you don't feel like going to work every day, but you just have to go. It's just part of it, right? So um, the more you show up, the more you'll achieve what you want to achieve, whether you feel like it or not. Uh, you know, and the other thing too is that um stop looking for perfection, just progress. Progress is more important than perfection. Uh I think it's uh now I'm just trying I'm trying to remember all these different sayings now. There was a lady who used to work for Facebook and she wrote she wrote a book uh her name's dropping out of my mind as well, but she said um uh done is better than perfect. I think it's no, her name keeps dropping out of my mind. I can't think of a name, but done is better than perfect, and I think she's absolutely right, done is better than perfect, and that's what we've got to do here because again, the doing something will give us momentum. And you know, if you only if you read any books or watch any progress of any people who are who have made it big and who are billionaires or who have uh you know done achieved great things, what you'll see is they fell over many times along the ways. So you're not gonna get it perfect, but you're just gonna have a go. Look, look at even just the progress of things like Tesla or something like that, regardless of regardless of your political opinions about any part of it or the or the owner or any of that, but just they have to be willing to you know break things or get it wrong to fix things, and um and so forget about perfect. Oh, Cheryl Sandberg is the name of that person who said done it's better than perfect. Cheryl with an S. Cheryl Sandberg, I remember now. So that's the truth about motivation. We need to understand that it just doesn't come out of nowhere. We need to work at it and showing up as a big part of it. Another part of it that is worth mentioning is it's worth understanding that um that we build these um these pathways, these neurological pathways that help us with our habits, our daily habits. And uh we need to build new neurological pathways to create new ways of being, new habits and and uh and new ways of thinking. And that doesn't happen just by doing something once, that happens by doing it over and over and over again. And those new neurological pathways will actually allow you to be able to achieve the things you want to achieve and do the things you want to do. So this this matters whether or not you're talking about doing something to change your health, doing something to create your business, do whatever it is, but something that involves you having discipline and showing up regularly and doing the thing and being prepared to fail while you're doing the thing, they that's all how you make neurological pathways so that you can have success in what you want to do. And the important thing to understand about neurological pathways. So I'll just I'll take a back step and just give you an example. Well, I've used this example before on what a neurological pathway is. If you think about a baby, in you know, in the human world, babies are born unable to walk. So, say a giraffe is born being able to walk pretty much straight away. That is gigantic, right? But for a woman, a human woman, to be able to birth a baby that um had enough neural pathways developed in its brain that it could um already walk, it would the head would be way too big. So what we do is to get through the birth canal, right? So, what we do is we have babies that are born without these neurological pathways fully developed, and they have to learn how to do those things. And if you've spent any time around a baby, you'll see how this happens. So at first, they have to learn and get the strength enough in their neck to hold up the to hold the head up, right? And then over time, you know, they have tummy time and they start to lift up their head, and then eventually what they're doing is they're rolling over and then they start to lift up their knees and start to crawl, then they start to stand and eventually they walk. But all of those things they're doing, all of those different actions that they're doing is creating neurological pathways in their brain so that those things can work. But what they have to do is they have to fall over a thousand times before they can stand and before they can walk. And we understand that with babies, we see that with babies. We do understand that babies need time to grow and need time to develop and need time to build those neurological pathways so that they can function and do all of these things. The same thing happens with you know with language, uh, learning they learn to speak because they're listening to and watching the people around them, and they learn the language and the patterns and the behaviors and all sorts of things that they're learning and they're taking in from watching, from observing, from listening to and seeing what's going on around them. This is all building neurological pathways, but we understand as babies that they can't do it perfectly and they're going to stumble a lot and they're going to get it wrong a lot until they get it right. But there's something about sort of when we become an adult that we simply decide that getting it wrong is not an option. We can't get it wrong because that's terrible failure, and we can't have terrible failure, and everything's going to be over, and you know, all of this catastrophe catastrophizing. When it's the same as adult, that we need to actually give ourselves time to get it right, and you need to be prepared to get it wrong to get it right. And again, going back to the Elon Musk example, him talking about SpaceX, he was talking about it the other day and explaining that because people are going, oh ha ha ha, his rocket ships are uh uh exploding or whatever, and that means he's failing. No, it's actually not because he's failing, it's because he's got a test, he's got to test what the limits are with different materials and and other things that I don't understand because I don't understand all this physics stuff and everything. But obviously, he's got to test what's going to work. The only way you know what's going to work is to test what's not going to work. So that pressure's too high, or that speed's too high, or that material can't handle that temperature, or whatever it is. I don't know. The specific examples I don't understand. But you you have to actually test that. So you have to be prepared to blow up a lot of things to find out what's not going to blow up because eventually you want to have spaceships that don't blow up and spaceships that can maybe have humans in them that don't blow up, right? So that is how you get good at the thing. And it's the same for human beings just doing human stuff, is I've talked about before, you're not you're not a great singer the first time you open up your mouth. You're not a great writer the first time you write something. You're not good at horse riding or at basketball or anything else you can think of until you practice at it, learning to cook anything. So we need to understand that we have to be prepared to fail. We have to be prepared to fall on our backside and get it wrong and look silly and sound silly. And that's a big part of what stops people from trying stuff is they think if I can't do it perfect, then I can't do it at all. Well, first of all, good luck doing it perfect, but you're not going to get anywhere near perfect if you don't have all the failure in between now and then. You're going to have all the failure to get to that place where you can be close as close to perfect as possible. Look at if you any musician that you see or speak to that is brilliant, do you know how many hours they've spent doing that instrument? Or that whether the instrument is their voice or the instrument is an actual physical instrument that they're carrying. Many, many thousands and thousands and thousands of hours. So it's important to remember this when we're just in new endeavors and when we've got goals. Because when we have goals, whatever they are, like I said before, whether they are around uh health or weight or some other health-related goal or fitness, or whether they are a business goal or a study goal, or like I said, learning to write, becoming a writer, whatever it is, we have to understand that we just cannot sit around and wait for motivation to come up and arrive because it doesn't work that way. Anything we're going to achieve in life, anything we're going to do in life, it's going to happen because we do it, we just show up. We just constantly show up. You show up, then you show up, then you show up and you show up. And every time you show up, you just push that bit further, you push that bit forward, you learn that new thing, or you learn that this is the wrong direction, you need to go in that way, or you learn this is you know it blows up when you do it that way. We're not going to do it that way anymore, we're going to do it this way. This is a temperature, this is a gauge, this is what we need to know so we can move forward. We don't do that unless we're willing to give it a go. So don't be fooled into thinking that motivation is something that just hits some people, and some people get other people don't get. Motivation is something that you achieve by movement, by actually doing something, by actually, you know, just turning up, arriving, being prepared to give it a go, and being prepared to fail. And if you understand that, you will understand that rather than waiting around for the motivation to come to you, you need to just show up every day until the motivation starts to build for you. As you start to get momentum, as you start to trust yourself, because you're showing up regularly for yourself, you will find that you will get that momentum and you'll feel better about yourself. You'll feel more confident with yourself. And the more all of that comes together, the more you will be able to achieve that goal because you'll be positioned in a better place to better keep moving forward and achieve that goal. So we have to remember with achieving any goal, we need to understand how our brain works. We need to understand building neural pathways and building new neural pathways and new habits. Old habits have really strong neural pathways because we've done them over and over and over again. So if we want to create new habits, we have to be prepared to do them over and over and over again until they become your new habit. So whether this is about habits of what we drink, what we eat, what we do, or whether this is about becoming a great writer or becoming a great musician or achieving great business success or whatever it is, all of those things require you showing up, having a go, being prepared to fail, working at it consistently, just consistently showing up. And that is how we achieve goals. That is how we change our neural pathway, so that our natural neural pathway, our natural pathway that we use is automatically the one that's going to help us achieve our goals, that's going to support our health or support whatever we want to achieve. That is going to build, that is going to happen because we show up. Simple as that. Not because motivation is going to come and fly out of nowhere and arrive on your doorstep. It just does not work that way. People miss this all of the time, wondering why motivation. How come that person gets motivation and I don't get motivation? So I'm just going to go over the basic steps again, just to remind you that motivation fellows, action, not the other way around. Discipline will always beat motivation. Just a discipline that showing up regularly will beat motivation. It's important to celebrate your small wins because that's what builds momentum. Because when we celebrate our small wins, see what we've achieved, focus on what we've achieved and what we have and what we're doing rather than what we don't have or what we haven't done, we get that momentum. We feel good about ourselves. It gives us momentum and it's really, really important that we're feeling that we trust ourselves, we get that momentum. You don't always feel like it. That's too bad. Just show up, just keep showing up. Feeling like it, it's not about feeling like it, it's about just showing up. Um, and perfection is the going to be is going to be the enemy, you know. So it's it's you know, done is better than perfect. We've just got to do it. And it won't get perfect anyway. Just think of even just cooking. If you've ever perfected a dish, how many times did you get it wrong before you get it right? Especially if you're coming up with a new recipe. If you're coming up with a new recipe, how many times does that thing have to not work? Or that cake doesn't rise, or that tastes wrong, it tastes bad, whatever it is, how many times do you have that before you just get that dish that is fantastic? You know, you have to be prepared to do it wrong a bunch of times to get it right. So it's just important to understand this. It's the truth about motivation, does just come and hit you suddenly. You have to work at it and you have to show up. That's where you get motivation from from showing up. So I hope that that was useful for you. Please, again, I as I always ask, like, subscribe, share, comment, and review. And um, and also uh, you know, remember this is where we have real conversations about things that matter. And motivation is an important one because I think that we have to understand how we achieve things as human beings. And waiting for the motivation, probably not going to happen. So, how about just showing up instead? Thank you for watching and listening, and I will talk to you all again next week. Thank you so much. Bye.
