Motivation, a ghost.

On grit, ghosts, and getting through.

Back in high school, I developed severe OCD. So severe I once slammed my left hand in my mom’s van door by accident—then slammed the right one too, just so the throbbing would match.

Living with OCD was a daily kind of torment. Eventually, I had to un-enroll from school and homeschool myself for a year because I couldn’t cope with all of the things outside of my control in that environment. The turning point came when I realized how much this was going to keep interfering with my goals. I wanted a life. I wanted options. So I started teaching myself ERP—exposure and response prevention therapy.

Sounds lame, but at the time one of my sticky beliefs was that “down” was bad and “up” was good. If I ever pointed something down or watched it go down, I had to make it go up last. I couldn’t think about anything else until I did. The thought was so loud I couldn’t tune it out. Turning off the light at night had become impossible, and I couldn’t sleep with it on, so that was the first thing I worked on.

I figured turning off the light might be an easy win—but it wasn’t easy. If it had been I wouldn’t have been leaving it on for the past six months.

The first two days, I’d flip the switch off and force myself to wait five seconds before turning it back on. All of the usual compulsive thoughts flooded in. Then the dread. The panic. The rage at ignoring the dread and the panic. But I told myself I could do anything for 5 seconds. I didn’t have to fix it, I only had to survive the flood for 5 seconds.

I hated it, and it was embarrassingly hard, and it didn’t feel good when I finished, and my brain continued to remind me the entire time that the end goal was never going to happen–but I tolerated it.

Then I worked up to ten seconds. Then a minute. Then an hour.

I wish I could say I got over it in a couple days or that it got easier, but the truth is it took literal weeks to work up to an hour and that was with me practicing and failing hundreds of times a day. Every time I did it I could feel my whole body screaming at me to flip it back up and every night I went to sleep with the light on reminding me of my weakness and my brain whispering over and over again that I was a pathetic unlovable failure who would never do this or anything else of value.

I didn’t keep going because I was motivated. Not because it got easier. Not because I’d finally convinced myself this whole up-down thing was ridiculous.

I felt like shit the whole time.

It took over 6 months to get a handle on my OCD behaviors and I didn’t celebrate the wins until the near end because I was too busy in hell doing the work.

I only kept going because I’d decided that I was miserable either way and I’d rather be miserable-on-purpose with a shot at something better than miserable-on-accident without one.

Every day I felt like I wasn’t up to it and would want to take a break. Then I’d remember that “later” had historically meant “never” so “now” was going to have to be the only acceptable call. I couldn’t keep waiting for future-better-me to show up and make it stop anymore.

This whole experience taught me the only truth that’s ever mattered about motivation: She’s a flake.

I’m thinking about this today because I’ve been online more this week, and I keep seeing those rags-to-riches, one-magical-moment of motivation or clarity posts. If you’re on Linkedin, you know the ones:

“I used to be lost. Then I discovered this one simple trick. Now my willpower is perfect, I work less hard for the same outcomes, and have everything I’ve ever wanted. Follow me/watch this video, and you can live a life of easy leisurely success too.”

Not to be a hater—maybe that really worked for them. But maybe you read posts like that and, for some reason, your own motivation doesn’t immediately flood in and transform your life either.

Quick unlocks, easy paths to success—I don’t buy them. I don’t know a single person living a meaningful life who got there through a cheat code. It took sweat.

None of the good, hard, rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life felt easy or started with motivation. They started with dread. Resistance. Procrastination. That hollow feeling in your chest when you know what you need to do but can’t get yourself to do it.

If we want to change, we’ve got to give up the fantasy that we’ll wake up different one day—that motivation will save us. She’s more likely to ghost you. She might show up once in a while but she won’t stay, never arrives when you need her the most, and she definitely won’t drag you out of the holes you’ve been digging for years.

What works is learning to act anyway. To show up anyway. To do the hard thing even when every part of your body is begging for escape.

If you want to get anything worth having, you have to seek out a lot of discomfort. Not let it bully you back to the path you already know you hate. The people who are doing what you want to be doing? They’re not operating from ease or inspiration. They’ve just stopped waiting for it to feel good first.

That’s the wisdom that was waiting for me on the other side of ERP.

I haven’t acted on an OCD impulse in years. Occasionally the thoughts still float through me, but they no longer grip me. These days I’m much less miserable-on-accident. I’ve had tremendous opportunities and success. I get to add value to the world, solve deeply important problems, and support people in building better lives.

And none of it came from bursts of motivation or the ease of a well-paved road. It came from doing things I didn’t want to do. When I didn’t feel like doing them. Over and over and over again.

So if you’re stuck in the waiting room of your life, thinking your future self will come rescue you, reading LinkedIn posts and listening to podcasts you hope are gonna gift you willpower—stop waiting.

You don’t need to want to do the thing.

You just need to do it.