How To Never Feel Unmotivated Ever Again.
‘how can I motivate myself to go to the gym?’, is a question people ask me … a lot.
I always answer by asking them ‘do you want the truth ?’
Funny enough, most of them ask for the truth, even though they know they won’t like it.
I tell them, "The secret is that you have to understand how motivation works in order to be able to use it to your advantage"
The majority of people consider motivation as this thing they don’t have access to or control over, something that has been chosen for them - It’s really not.
Motivation is pretty simple to understand, more than that it’s the greatest tool - when you have control over it.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about the habit of going to the gym. Motivation is the starting point of every one of your habit.
Now, the problem is that motivation is a generalized system, people are not just unmotivated to go to the gym, most of them also struggle with :
Respecting their diet
Maintaining consistent sleep
Managing their stress
Being organized
Procrastination …
All of that comes from the same problem, the imbalance of your dopamine levels, leading to the need for instant gratification and the incapacity to delay the reward. This is the reason why you don’t feel motivated.
And in this article I’ll first explain why you feel unmotivated and the role of dopamine and secondly how to step by step bring your dopamine levels back to normal, enabling you to crack the code to motivation.
Your unmotivated because your brain is impatient
Motivation is this drive, this mobilization of energy that your brain triggers to push you towards a certain behavior.
Now, at the level of the brain, motivation is based mostly on the activity of dopamine.
Quick neuroscience - dopamine acts as a neurotransmitter, essentially a vehicle that transports information from neuron to neuron - Basically telling your brain to pursue this thing whatever it is.
It isn’t the only thing that dopamine does, it’s also responsible for a lot of others functions, movement for example but today we’ll use the perspective of motivation and drive.
This chemical signal doesn’t make the difference between what is good for you and what is bad for you. The dopamine in your brain doesn’t make the difference between the gym and the doughnut.
It is just being triggered whenever your brain seeks a pleasurable outcome.
The issue isn’t about the pleasure aspect. If you can feel excitement and pleasure from activities like eating, playing video games, or hanging out with friends, your dopamine system is functioning.
This tells us that the problem lies in the timing of your dopamine release, not the distribution of dopamine itself.
In other words, the problem isn’t that you’re unmotivated; it’s that your motivation isn’t "in the right place" if that makes sense.
This is likely due to the fact that you’ve habituated your dopamine responses to certain contexts but not others.
If you taught your brain to seek instant gratification essentially saying ‘yes’ and giving your brain what it wants as quickly as possible to avoid discomfort—then that’s the major problem.
By doing this, you’re telling your brain, like a child, that it doesn’t have to wait for a reward, making it increasingly impatient.
And the reward you truly want—getting in shape—is a long way down the road, and your brain is too impatient to invest its dopamine in that distant outcome that seems so out of reach.
That’s why you can’t feel motivated to go to the gym. You’ve primed your brain to seek easy and quick rewards, making it difficult to sustain the long-term reward.
The type of reward that fitness requires.
The solution is to teach your brain how to wait, how to be patient, and how to engage in behaviours that don’t offer an immediate reward—and to be okay with that.
So, the first key to taking back control over your motivation and reinvesting it in fitness is to stop giving your brain what it wants when it wants it.
Add a little pain if you want to feel good
The key to understand is that dopamine functions as a balance between pain and pleasure. When you have what you want, you feel pleasure;
when you don’t, you crave it, wish for it, and experience discomfort—the pain of wanting something but not having it.
You brain has evolved to trigger this reaction because pain is the greatest motivator and inducing this pain, is it’s own way to motivate you to get this thing that you want.
The problem arises when you can’t tolerate the pain of wanting. When you constantly give in to immediate gratification, you inevitably diminish the value of larger, long-term rewards because you’re focused on the immediate, smaller ones.
But everything worth achieving takes time. That is true especially when it comes to building your physique.
More than that, up to a certain point, these quick rewards—like food, social media, or watching TV—will leave you feeling stuck, unmotivated, and unable to reach your goals.
The more you consume fast and easy rewards, the more dopamine you use, which eventually leaves you depleted.
Without enough dopamine in your system, you can’t trigger the motivation needed to pursue your goals.
It’s not just that these quick fixes make you impatient; they also drain your dopamine reserves, leaving you unable to engage with your long-term goals.
That’s why, when habituated, your brain will always choose video games over a walk or reading over eating when bored—because video games and food provide more dopamine, faster, and with less effort.
This is also why, if you maintain these behaviors, it will be incredibly difficult to build new, healthy habits and to stay away from unhealthy ones.
As your brain will always choose the path of least resistance. - That is just its default mode of working
Now we know the solution to all of that. If you want to rebalance the pain and pleasure balance towards the side of pleasure, you need to intentionally add pain into the equation.
This doesn’t mean hurting, this means adding difficult things that are going to feel uncomfortable and reducing the easy and accessible pleasure sources.
Going to the gym is the perfect habit as the goal is to destroy your muscles in the gym purposefully so that they have to grow bigger stronger and more healthy.
You have to train hard to force the adaptation and when you’re training, it doesn’t feel good, in fact you feel pretty bad.
But that’s what is powerful about exercising, you know you’re damaging your body in the moment for it to improve, upgrade, ameliorate itself overtime.
That is what you want, if you feel unmotivated, stuck and like things aren’t bringing you that much joy in your life. Add discomfort to your lifestyle, planned and purposeful discomfort.
Replace the cheap dopamine with hard earned dopamine. That’s how you bring back pleasure and enjoyment in your lifestyle and reach your dream physique in the long run.
Self-Binding is the key.
The best part is that all of that is within reach, I’ve been through it, my clients have been through it.
It isn’t complex to do, you can rebalance your dopamine levels and adopt the habit of going to the gym as a lifestyle in a matter of weeks. If you do that, I can guarantee that your physique will transform.
[That is why I’ve created fitness autonomy in the first place, to give you all the tools you need (wether it’s about exercise, nutrition or motivation) in this journey. if you want more info, here]
So if you want that to happen in your life, you need to start imposing yourself rules to be able to reduce the dopamine that you release from cheap sources and increase the one that you get form hard earned sources.
And here’s how to do it step-by-step.
I- Reduce the instant gratification episodes
The first and hardest step is to reduce the sources and frequency of the cheap dopamine you’re currently getting.
You need to create more room and free up enough dopamine to establish the healthy habits that you want to adopt
This is what many people refer to as a dopamine fast or detox, but as you can see, it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
Start by identifying your main sources of cheap dopamine, which are usually:
Video games
Social media
Gambling
Consuming content
Sugary food
Stimulants like nicotine and caffeine …
If several of these are present in your life right now, trying to eliminate them all at once can be counterproductive as it just costs your brain too much.
If you remove all your sources of cheap dopamine and try to replace them with something challenging—like going to the gym, which doesn’t yet trigger enough dopamine because it hasn’t been encoded as something rewarding—your brain might rebel.
You’ll experience cravings, temptations, and a lot of frustration. Add to that a deep sense of unmotivation because no dopamine is being released anymore, and you have the perfect storm most people face when trying to overhaul their lifestyle all at once.
The key is not to get rid of everything but to intentionally reduce your engagement with your main sources of cheap dopamine. This way, you can conserve enough dopamine to tackle the challenging task of going to the gym.
Most people are aware of the main problems in their lives. If you’re overweight and struggle with food intake, then food is likely your main source of cheap dopamine, and that’s where you’ll need to focus.
If your main issue is procrastination and binge-watching TV after work, then reducing that behavior should be your first priority.
II- Accept the state of want
Reducing the dopamine you get from cheap sources will inevitably trigger an unpleasant reaction.
You’ll feel uneasy, experience discomfort, and have a profound sense of wanting that thing.
This is to be expected—it's actually a good sign because it means your brain is craving a dopamine boost, and you’re not giving in. You’re keeping that dopamine for more meaningful goals.
Self-binding is the only way to achieve this, as your brain will try to convince you to return to easy and quick gratification - Remember, that the default mode
You need to set boundaries and use them to teach your brain how to be patient and handle not getting what it wants in the moment, so you can reach your long-term goals later.
The negative feeling of wanting is a normal part of the process. It won’t harm you, and it doesn’t mean what you’re doing is wrong either. Just as comfort fills our lives, discomfort should be an equally important part of it.
You must distinguish between what is meaningful for you and what feels good because this is far from being the same thing.
I bet you that Batman doesn’t experience much pleasure fighting in the streets of Gotham but it sure looks damn admirable to me.
In a world of extreme accessibility, it’s your responsibility to set your own limits and restrict this accessibility whenever it’s blocking you from reaching your objectives.
That said, the intensity of the negative reaction will be proportional to the level of stimulation you usually get from the experience. This won’t be easy, but it will be meaningful.
III- Find healthy coping mechanisms
At some point, you’ll start to realize that only a handful of habits are preventing you from reaching your goals. By becoming aware of them, you’ll be able to disengage from these unhealthy patterns.
More than that, these unhealthy habits are essentially ways to cope with life’s stressors, unease, and boredom.
While having coping mechanisms is necessary, the key is to make them work for you instead of against you.
Exercise is a perfect example. It helps you release tension, forget about anxiety, and it’s good for your health and longevity. Again, I highly recommend weightlifting and if you to know where to start, here’s how to.
To replace those negative habits you’re trying to break, you need to swap them with healthier alternatives that allow you to disconnect from life for a moment.
You can replace eating with reading.
You can replace smoking with running.
You can replace video games with cooking.
You can replace shopping with going to the museum.
The key is sustainability—the habit needs to help you, or at the very least, not harm your health or happiness in the long run.
Of course, these habits are harder to build since they aren’t as immediately gratifying as your current vices, but if you build them properly, they can gradually transform your daily life for the better.
Now again, don’t try to implement that all at once or you’ll feel overwhelmed and the process won’t be durable which is the opposite of what we want.
IV- Use your dopamine to engage in meaningful activities
By following the previous steps, you’ll free up enough dopamine to engage in the meaningful activities that will lead you to your goals.
This doesn’t mean you’ll feel excessively motivated, but it does mean you’ll have enough dopamine to stay consistent.
Now, it’s about having a clear goal and sticking to it with self-discipline. [I wrote another article about self-discipline, check it here].
You want to channel your focus and energy in one direction. If your goal is to make going to the gym a habit—which it should be :) —then your priority is ensuring this happens constantly.
The key is to make a commitment, a promise to yourself, to engage in the activity you’ve set out to do, and to know why you’re doing it.
The motivation you’re seeking—the excitement and joy from the habit—is something that develops over time with those types of ‘slow dopamine sources’
This feeling comes once you’ve disciplined your brain to engage in the activity so much that you’ve become skilled at it.
Moreover, it’s not something that will be constant. I’ve been training six days a week for years, and sometimes I feel that motivation and drive, but sometimes I don’t.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you need to wait to be 100% motivated to engage because that’s unrealistic—your brain will always seek escapes.
When you’ll start to feel confident, understand what you’re doing in the gym, and know how to do it well, you’ll naturally begin to enjoy it because you gain a sense of efficacy. It will feel right.
That’s when your brain starts rewarding you for the activity itself, not just for an external reward like achieving an Instagram-worthy body.
When you reach that point, you’re likely to stick with it for the rest of your life. But you have to make that possible for yourself.
In the meantime, you just try your very best to make that scenario happen. Adopt fitness as a lifestyle
As always - I hope this helps, trust the process.
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