The phone rings and it’s your manager’s voice on the other end, strained, apologetic, heavy with the weight of things unsaid. “I’m sorry for letting the team down,” she says. “I can’t show up the way I want to right now.”
What do you do? What do most of us do?
We reach for the nearest emotional fire extinguisher: “You can do it! We believe in you!”
The words taste sweet leaving your mouth. They feel helpful, supportive, like you’re being a good colleague, a good friend. You hang up feeling like you’ve done something meaningful.
Then the next few days unfold. She was right. She couldn’t show up anymore.
You sit there, replaying the conversation, wondering if you should have called her every day with the same cheerleading routine. “You can do it! We believe in you” Like some kind of motivational alarm clock that won’t shut up.
But here’s what gnaws at you in the quiet moments: Would that have actually changed anything?
The Second Strike
A few months pass and a friend studying for actuarial exams confesses they’re struggling to pass. You know this drill. You’ve been here before exams. But this time, you decide to do it differently. You check in more consistently. You wave that “you can do it” banner like it’s the flag at the finish line they just need to see.
He never makes it across.
Two people. Two failures. Same approach.
At some point, you have to stop blaming the people and start questioning the method.
Also, the people who were prepared and ready did not need the You can do it speech.
The Motivation Myth
So I started reading. Digging. Asking uncomfortable questions like: Does motivation actually work?
Sure, it can make you feel better in the moment. That surge of possibility, that feeling that maybe, just maybe, you really can conquer the world. It’s intoxicating. It’s why we watch those TikTok clips at 2 AM when we can’t sleep, the ones with the dramatic music and someone’s face way too close to the camera telling you that today is YOUR day, that you’re destined for greatness, that you just need to believe.
And for exactly 47 seconds, you do believe. You feel invincible.
Then you close the app, roll over, and wake up the next morning to the same life, the same problems, the same you. The same Tuesday.
Because here’s what motivation really is: It’s a spike. An energy drink for your emotions. A drug. An orgasm. Right after that short, intense burst, everything deflates back to exactly what it was before.
You can watch every motivational video on the internet. You can read that book everyone swears changed their life. You can sit in that church chair on Sunday morning and feel the sermon wash over you like holy water. It all feels so real, so necessary, like you needed to hear those exact words at that exact moment.
But nothing has actually changed.
The Brutal Truth
To be more brutal: Nothing will change until YOU change.
Not your feelings about change. Not your intentions to change. Not your plans to change.
Actual, uncomfortable, messy, imperfect change.
Confidence isn’t built by listening to someone tell you that you can. Confidence is built by doing, by taking action and surviving the experience. By failing and realizing you’re still breathing. By producing something terrible and learning exactly why it’s terrible so you can make it less terrible next time.
Planning is not doing, by the way. Planning is just another way to feel productive while avoiding the thing that actually scares you. If you look carefully its a form of how people hide the fear of action.
Start writing, you’ll figure out how to write as you move. Learn a new language, figure it out as you go. Automate that process, figure it out as you stumble forward.
Once you start, actually start, the real questions emerge. And only then can real help find you. Because now you’re not asking theoretical questions from the safety of the planning phase. You’re in the arena, covered in dust and bruises, asking questions born from actual experience.
Perfect Is the Enemy of Done
I wanted to write. So I planned. I read about how other writers did it. I watched TikToks analyzing writing styles, dissecting successful blogs, explaining the secret formula. YouTube is full of long videos of how to do it.
All useless information as you do not know exactly what you need to improve on.
Then one day I gathered up enough courage (or stupidity, same thing really) to write my first draft. When I reviewed it, my feelings weren’t just hurt, they were demolished. It was rubbish. Complete, undeniable rubbish.
But here’s the thing: Once I could see it was rubbish, I could see WHY it was rubbish. Too serious. Tone all wrong. No depth. No real-life stories for people to grab onto. No texture, no smell, no feeling, nothing that made readers want to stay.
Suddenly I knew exactly what I needed to work on. Not in theory. Not from someone else’s advice. From my own terrible first attempt.
That’s how you actually learn. Not by avoiding the mud, but by walking straight through it and seeing what sticks to your shoes.
The Weight of Real Work
If you give someone something to do, something consistent, something meaty enough that it demands effort, it builds their confidence in ways that “you can do it” never could.
There’s a Japanese saying: “If you master the way of one, you master the way of many.” I am still looking for the actual saying in Japanese.
Mastering that one thing teaches you lessons that ripple outward. You learn how to push through resistance. How to tolerate looking stupid. How to survive your own inner critic. How to iterate instead of quit. How to measure progress in actions, not feelings.
These lessons transfer. Not because someone told you they would, but because you earned them.
The Muddy Patch
Taking action is hard because you WILL look stupid. It WILL be difficult. It WILL hurt. You WILL think you’re not good enough.
That’s not a warning. That’s a guarantee.
Every person who has ever done anything worth talking about has walked through that muddy patch. They felt their shoes sink. They felt the cold seep in. They wanted to turn back.
But they didn’t. And on the other side, they discovered something no motivational video could ever give them: proof that they could survive discomfort. Evidence that they were capable. Confidence built on a foundation of actual experience, not borrowed enthusiasm.
What Actually Helps
So what should I have said to my manager? To my friend?
Maybe: “What’s one small thing you can do today?”
Maybe: “What does showing up look like at your actual capacity right now, not the capacity you wish you had?”
Maybe: “Let’s figure out the first step together, and you take it. Then we’ll talk about step two.”
Not empty promises that they can do it. Not cheerleading from the sidelines while they drown.
But a rope. A flashlight. A map with one marked step.
Because “you can do it” asks them to believe in a version of themselves that doesn’t exist yet. But “do this one thing” asks them to become a person who does things. And that person? That person can actually build something real.
The Bottom Line
You can watch every motivational video. You can read every self-help book. You can fill your brain with affirmations and mantras and promises.
Or you can do one small, imperfect thing today.
Guess which one changes your life?
Go through the muddy patch. Your confidence is waiting on the other side, not the false kind that comes from someone else’s words, but the real kind that comes from discovering you can do hard things because you’ve already done them.
That’s not motivation.
That’s proof.
Whats your first step that you will be taking?