The Bold and Brilliant Podcast with Tracie Root - The Truth About Motivation

🎧 Episode Summary:
In this solo episode, Tracie peels back the curtain on one of the biggest myths holding people back — motivation. Spoiler alert: motivation isn’t something you wait for — it’s something you create. Listen in as Tracie shares how taking imperfect, bold action fuels momentum, which in turn, builds motivation. If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, “I should really…” — this episode is your wake-up call.

✨ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why waiting for motivation is a trap (and what to do instead)
• The sneaky damage of the word should in your self-talk
• How momentum, not magic, builds motivation
• A simple formula to shift from stuck to in-action
• The truth behind “Consistency beats intensity”

🛠️ Actionable Tips from Tracie:

• Ditch the word should — replace it with intentional action
• Decide what you’re going to do, when, and tell someone about it
• Start small — any action counts and builds momentum
• Lean on consistency — even imperfect action fuels motivation
• Write down your next action and share it with a trusted person

🎤 Memorable Quote:
“Motivation follows momentum — and momentum starts when you take bold action, even when you don’t feel like it.”

🔥 Bold Moment of the Episode:
When Tracie admits recording solo episodes isn’t easy — and does it anyway, live and unscripted, showing us all how to walk the talk of bold, imperfect action.

📱 Connect with Tracie:
Find Tracie in The Gather Community on Facebook or connect on LinkedIn. Share what action you’re taking — she'd love to cheer you on!

🚀 Join the Bold and Brilliant Podcast Community:
Love these conversations? Be part of our growing circle of women taking bold action every day. Search The Gather Community with Tracie Root on Facebook and plug into the support and inspiration you need.

🌟 Rate & Review:
Are you loving these bold conversations? Rate, review, and share the podcast — your feedback helps other brilliant women find their next spark of motivation.

Thank you for supporting The Bold and Brilliant Podcast!

Find out what's up with Tracie by connecting on your favorite social media channel, and with The Gather Community by joining us at an upcoming online event or receiving our mailing list. Go to:

https://www.tracieroot.com/links

to find upcoming events, workshops, courses and more!

We're just getting started, so I hope you subscribed, and please leave a review so we can start building some podcast-momentum!

xoxo
Your host,
Tracie Root

Transcript

Tracie: 0:35

Hey everyone, it's Tracie, and I am here because the Bold and Brilliant podcast is my podcast. And when I created it last year, when I came up with the concept, I decided I wanted to do a combination of interviewing amazing women, which I love doing, gather communities based on connecting and highlighting other amazing women leaders and entrepreneurs. But I also wanted to share some of my thoughts and my expertise honestly, related to building community, entrepreneurship, leadership coaching, holding space for people so that they can grow and thrive, all these kinds of things. And most of the podcasters that I talked to as I was creating the, all of these ideas told me that the interviews are easy. Because there's someone else there. But making yourself sit down and do solo episodes is not as easy, is a little more challenging. And I have so found that to be true. So here I am doing a solo episode, bringing you some thoughts, and what did I do? I decided to just get an action. I don't know how it's going to go. That is okay, because perfection is not required. Really what I wanna do is be an example for other podcasters, for other people in my community to show that even when you're not sure what to do, the most important thing is to take action. Take bold action. This is what I always say. So what did I do? I ask my friend over here on my second screen, Mr. Chat, GPT, I've decided that. He or she, they, I'm gonna call my chat. GPT. They, I'm very LGBT inclusive anyway. Gender, neutral. They are going to help me with a bunch of topics with bullet points and my chat. GPT knows me quite well now because the support that they give me related to, helping me work through ideas has been monumental for my business. Don't knock it till you try it, people. And one of the 30 topics with bullet points it just gave me is called the truth about motivation. It's not what you think. And so this is the one I'm gonna talk about because it's just so spot on for exactly what we're talking about already. So here we go. The truth about motivation is that it's not. A thing like motivation isn't a thing you can get. It's something that comes from within after you already take action. So the biggest trick of all of this motivation stuff is to get into action. I actually was talking with my teenager about this very same thing not long ago, that when you're feeling unmotivated. The number one thing you can do is to take action. Any kind of action, just do something. Because here's the thing, if you don't feel like getting started, you are not gonna start those feelings like they ball up inside us to when we decide that not only do we not feel like it, but even if we did, it's just gonna turn out terrible and. So why should we even start? And there's that word should creeping into the narrative. It's the worst word I literally have done, literally is another one of those. I have done everything I can to try to remove the word should from my vocabulary entirely. I don't really know of any good place where the word should can live and be helpful. Because anytime we think I should do this, I should do that. That should be that way. They should be that way. Life should be easy. It's just, it's like a, it's not necessarily that it's a judgment, although a lot of times it is a judgment that we are judging it for being different than what we think it should be, but that. There is no one way for anything to be, so how can we say it should be anything? Even when we're talking about people like this is a good example, people treating people with kindness. People should treat people with kindness. That's a phrase that I don't know that anyone at a first glance would really argue about. 'cause treating people with kindness is great. I love it. It's my goal to treat everyone with kindness. Doesn't mean being a doormat, it means, not treating them with unkindness. But to say people should treat people with kindness implies that you know all of the situation and you know the relationships and you know all of the details inside and out and up and down and through related to one person treating another person with kindness. So that's a good example of the idea of should not. Being a great like philosophy. And so when we tell ourselves I should do these things, if I had told myself I should do some single solo episodes if I had let that kind of fester in me, I think that I would've felt really poorly about my own. I don't know what the right word is. I would've felt poorly. I would've felt bad. I dunno if poorly is the right word. I would've felt bad about what I've done to date and how I haven't done the things that I told myself I was going to do, and I clearly am not moving forward with my goal and all those things. So if I listen to myself saying, I should do this thing, I probably will do the opposite. That's kind of like a toddler thing too, right? You tell a little kid you shouldn't do that, and of course they're gonna do it, right? You tell a teenager that's, you shouldn't do that. They're gonna do it because that's all about pushing boundaries and growing. Well, if we're gonna tell ourselves now that we're grown adults, that we should or shouldn't do something. Well, we might actually listen to ourselves because sometimes we're not in that toddler or teenage stage where we are trying to push boundaries. We're adults and we're kind of trying to stay safe and sane. So when you don't feel like getting started, we don't wanna tell ourselves, oh, you should do something or you shouldn't do something. Just know that it's okay to not feel like doing it. Then do it anyway. If you know it's the right thing to do for your progress or goals or growth, because you don't have to feel like it to get started. You just have to start. My mentor, you know, when I first started working with my business coach, the concept of. Just making a decision and going with it that day was very not where I was at the time. That's why I hired a coach, and when she told me to decide when, where, what you're gonna do, and then schedule it and then tell someone about it, and then keep telling people about it, and then figure out what you're gonna do with it. I, it was frightening. It was terrifying. And I did it anyway because I trusted her. To guide me. 'cause that was the whole reason we were working together in the first place. And why I made the investment in my time and in my thoughts and in my money. And I still think back to that day where, wow, it was such a simple formula. Decide what you're gonna do, when you're gonna do it, what you're gonna charge, what it's called, how to talk about it a little bit. And then get started. Just get started. Take action. Take bold action. And ever since that day I've been in action. Now, am I perfectly consistent? No, because perfection is not required, but consistency is huge. And the thing is that motivation, back to the truth about motivation, motivation follows momentum so much like a rock rolling down a hill. You know, you see a, you've seen boulders at the tops of mountains and they're just sitting there. But if that boulder gets in motion. It's not only gonna start rolling and keep rolling, but it's probably gonna keep rolling faster until it gets to, you know, a certain velocity. What's that called? Terminal velocity, right? The fastest it could probably go, but it's all about getting it started because when it starts, then it continues and it builds up momentum. It builds up its speed, it builds up momentum so that it can keep continuing with less and less effort. So when you start by taking action, you keep taking action. Now, taking action doesn't seem so difficult. So mo motivation follows momentum. And the last thing, which is the whole reason why I started today is that consistency beats intensity. Now did I ask my chat, GBT Friend to give me. A topic to talk about today? No, I asked them to give me 30 topics. And what's today, June 13th? Well, 30 topics. I'm not gonna be doing this every day, or at least I'm not gonna be releasing the episodes every day. But 30, honestly, 30 might be a year's worth of content. But even if with these 30, if I only like 20 of them. I'm gonna be good till like Q4 this year. That's exciting. That's like, that's enough to, again, give you more like excitement about taking action. So the motivation continues. It's thrilling to think that in front of me I have at least probably 20 topics that I could. Honestly sit down and record right now. They don't have to be long. They don't have to take a lot of thought because these are the things when you've been coaching as long as I have is my 13th year that we can talk about anything we've experienced so much. I've left corporate. I started a business. I had a team. I lost that team. I opened a brick and mortar that closed because of a global pandemic. I mean, the things that we have learned in the last 13 years, every single one of us are a lot. I don't need to like do research to talk about these 30 topics. I already know them, and it's just time to be in action. To let the momentum carry me through, and so I'm inviting you to do the same thing today. What have you been putting off? What have you been telling yourself? I really should do that? Well, if you take should out of it, what could you do right now? Or maybe you're not, what if you're driving a car but even right now, if you are driving a car, what could you decide right now? Will allow you to take action again and again with consistency so that you can build momentum so that the motivation is within you and it just starts to come out. So that's my invitation for you today. Decide what action you're gonna take, and as soon as you can take it, take it. If you're driving a car, you don't have to take it right this second, but think about it. If you're at your desk right now and you can write something down, think to yourself for right for a second, right now, what is it that I really do wanna take action on that I've been holding myself back from? Let the action build your motivation, and if you're willing. Tell me in the comments or wherever you're listening to this, wherever there might be comments or come into our Facebook group in the Gather community or connect with me on LinkedIn or whatever, wherever you can find me. Let me know what you got from hearing this, because every single one of you that are listening to this, if you like listening to podcasts, if it's about listening to people who help you with personal or professional development, you're looking for this kind of message. I know you are because I am you. So decide what you're gonna take action on. Write it down, send it to me, write it to me, send it to your accountability partner or your coach or whoever, but send it to someone. Let it live in the world because once you say it to another person, it is already in action. So let's do it. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks.