Motivation isn’t coming to rescue you—and waiting for it may be the exact reason you’re stuck.
After losing hours of work on this very podcast, Penney had a choice: retreat into excuses or decide what happened next. That moment became proof of a truth she’s learned through exercise, divorce, disappointment, and rebuilding: your brain wants to keep you safe, not successful. Your brain is a PRO at excuse making!
What You’ll Learn
Why motivation is an unreliable starting point
How your thoughts create feelings—and feelings drive action or inaction
Why hesitation gives your cave brain time to take control
How intentional thoughts helped Penney through difficult seasons
Why your decisions matter more than how ready you feel
The Mind Tool: The Decision Thought
Choose one task you’ve been waiting to feel motivated to do.
Before your brain supplies an excuse, write one thought that will help you move:
“I can do the first two minutes.”
“I’ll feel better when this is handled.”
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Read it and begin. Don’t wait to feel ready. Let action create momentum.
If nothing changes, nothing changes—pick a thought, make a decision, and take the first step.
About Penney
Penney Brinks is a certified Life Coach / Personal Breakthrough Strategist and creator of the Direct + Driven approach to turning awareness into action. She is also the author of I Would, BUT..., available on Amazon.
Connect
Website: https://www.mindsetmaneuvers.com
Email: penneymcrae@charter.net
Transcript
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Hello and welcome. My name is Penny Brinks and I want to welcome you to take two in regards to this podcast today, which is all about motivation being a crock. Here's my pity party story around doing the podcast. So I wrote up the whole podcast and the reason that I write them up is because I have a tendency to do what they call bird hop. Or when you see a squirrel, when all of a sudden you're talking about something, you see a squirrel and you're like, squirrel. My dad used to put his hand on my shoulder when I was young and say, stick to the topic, little girl. So what I have to do then is write out the podcast so that I stick to the topic and it does serve me very well. Well, I have this podcast almost all written out, done hours of research on it, on motivation. plus add to it my own take on it.
And I was pretty much done with it. And I walked away from the computer for, I don't know, a couple hours or whatever. When I came back, my mouse wasn't working. So I thought, well, shoot, something's wrong with the mouse. My hubby went out and got a new mouse, brought it in, nothing. So I wasn't able to use the mouse to save the file. But I knew if I rebooted the computer that I was going to lose everything. But there was no other option. So I had to shut it down and sure enough, when I turned it back on, there was nothing. So I could have had a big, you know, two-year-old meltdown and... Told myself, you know, I don't even know why I even try. I put all this effort into it and why.
And, you know, all the things that our brain loves to do to keep us in the cave. Then we don't have to do anything, see. So, which kind of goes hand in hand with the podcast that I'm sharing with you today, the topic called motivation. But rather than go down that road, when you are aware of how your thoughts impact your feelings, and your feelings then create the action or the inaction that you're going to take, it is a game changer in your life. A lot of times, or I shouldn't say a lot of times, the more you do it, the better you get at pausing before you go into this automated mode of feeling sorry for myself, blaming other people, using excuses.
the more you become aware of how that affects the results in your life, the better you get at it. Now, results can be viewed as a result in something that you can see, a tangible, or a result can be just an emotional result. So that's what happened to me today, or a couple days ago. So my hubby and I took off. for one night over the Labor Day weekend and today is actually Labor Day so I got back and I said to my hubby I have to record this podcast before the day is over and I could use all the excuses and I could just say well I'll do it tomorrow which is what our brain likes to do but I knew I had to get it done today so here I am. So we're going to talk about today I'm going to I'm going to talk to you today a little bit about motivation and how really truly that term motivation is a crock. And I remember back in the day when I taught Jazzercise and when I retired from teaching Jazzercise, I had some of my dear students, I don't even like to call them students, friends, come up to me and say, Penny, who's going to motivate us? to exercise. The reality of that was I didn't motivate them to exercise.
They came to class on their own. They did the things that they needed to do, got their shoes, made arrangements, whatever that might look like for each person. And they got themselves inside that door. And a lot of times before I would teach class, I would tell them, you just did the hardest part about coming to exercise. Now we're going to have some fun. We're going to dance. We're going to work out together. But the reality is their thoughts motivated them to do that. Maybe how they thought about how they would feel afterwards. Maybe how they thought about, you know, this is fun. I get to see my friends, whatever it is. Because if they would have had thoughts of, oh, I just don't feel like it. I'm too tired. That would have stayed them. That would have kept them stuck. So motivation isn't something that just happens to you.
I think that we like to think that way. But it just doesn't happen. We wait for motivation to hit us. That is our biggest downfall. We think that we're going to be motivated. I used to go to a number, oh, I just loved motivational speakers. And I still do because I always walk away with something. But motivational speakers in and of themselves do not motivate you. That is an inside job. But we have bought into the belief that you have to feel ready in order to change. We wait to feel ready. We wait for the confidence to be there. How many times have you heard people say, or you say, I'll do it when the motivation kicks in, or I just can't get motivated to do it. That's so backwards.
What you think is missing is motivation, and that's not true. Motivation is not something that's going to happen to you. You have to create it. But you see, a lot of times when we want to get motivated to do something, it's usually something we don't want to do. And we're not designed to do uncomfortable things, things that take time or cause discomfort, or maybe they... disappointment like when I did my pod when I wrote that whole thing out and then boom boom listen it's never about what happens to you it's how you choose to deal with it and some people might look at that as a failure like you did that podcast you did that whole thing but I look at it like you know what listen that happened and I'm gonna think about it this way uh I've already done the research I already have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to say. When I type it up the next time, it's probably going to be better.
Then that creates in me a feeling of excitement. And because we act out on our feelings, that's how that happens. You see, your brain is designed to protect you from things that are going to hurt you, protect you from the discomfort, the disappointment, or the failure. That's the design of your brain. Again, once you grasp that concept, you're like, aha, I've got this figured out. I know what's going on. It's not you. You're capable. You're able. It's just that brain of yours wants to keep you. It doesn't want you to be hurt. It doesn't want you to be disappointed. And as cute as that is or whatever, you're just going to stay. It's almost like a big protective mom saying, come on, come on, honey, you come in the cave. Don't experience life. Don't experience disappointment. Don't learn from it. It's really kind of ridiculous. And I've said it, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundreds of times.
Your brain is designed for survival, not success. Yet in order to accomplish the things in your life that you want. to accomplish, you're going to have to do the things that are sometimes scary, not just sometimes. I remember reading a book years ago and it says, feel the fear and do it anyway. Just move through it. Any person that's ever accomplished anything in life, don't think for a minute that they've got something that you don't. Rarely does that happen. They've just felt the fear and they've done it anyway. And a lot of times it's because their why is so strong, why they want it, why they want to accomplish it. But your brain isn't going to want to have you do anything that's difficult, time-consuming, scary, challenging.
But the truth is that most of the time, you're not going to feel like it. That's why motivation is a crack. Stop waiting to get motivated, to be motivated. Because rarely does that happen. You don't just bounce up in the morning and say, okay, now I'm all ready to go. And Mel Robbins, who's one of my, oh, I just love her. She wrote a book called, I think, The Five Second Rule. And she shares her story about how when she was, oh, I mean, her story is really quite something. And how she got herself out of bed in the morning when she was, they were. thousands and thousands, \$800,000 in debt. That's a whole new another story. She was drinking too much. She was, her life was a mess.
She couldn't get out of bed. And so if you ever want to get quote unquote motivated by listening to a story or her sharing what it took for her to get out of bed in the morning, we have a habit of hesitating when it comes to doing something. But that small hesitation, believe it or not, research shows that that small hesitation sends a stress signal to your brain. And you don't act out on stress. When you think of the term motivated, what do you think of? For me, I'm thinking, oh, I get excited, I'm full of energy, and I'm ready to go. What is it for you? What do you think of? And how often, seriously. How often do you actually feel motivated? We feel motivated when we're going to do something fun, when it's going to be something that we love. Then it's like, yeah, we don't even have to think about it. The time when you need it the most is when it comes to doing the hard things, if you want to look at it that way. I don't like to view things as hard. I like to view things as something that is, okay, this is going to take a little bit. energy from me okay which again your body doesn't like to do your brain doesn't like to do it's made to conserve energy so when you wake up in the morning after you take the time to quote unquote count your blessings the attitude of gratitude which my dad taught me at a very young age you remind yourself that motivation is a bunch of crap bunch of crockery garbage bs You are not going to feel motivated to make the call, get the workout in, answer the emails, clean the house, get the groceries, get your laundry down.
Whatever you have to do that day to move forward with your accomplishments, chances are you're not going to feel motivated. You've just got to do it. Nike had the best marketing way back in the day, and just do it. You've just got to do it. Just like back in the Jazzercise days when those gals would put their tennis shoes on and just... go to class when I'm sure they didn't always feel like it. You know logically that no one else is going to come to your rescue. They're not going to do it for you. And a lot of times they can't. Yet there you are hesitating. And that hesitation is just long enough for those thoughts to come in. And our brain is wired on a negativity bias. So guess what?
Here's the thing that I want you to really. become aware of. Listen to me when I say this. Our thoughts are optional. Nobody can make you think something that you don't want to think. Most of the thoughts that you have in a day are repetitive and negative because we have about 60 ,000 thoughts a day. And there's no way we can, you know, process all of those thoughts. And many of them serve us very well, but many of them do not. And again, your brain is set up on a negativity bias. So you have to learn how to override that. Just don't get mad at it. Don't, you know, like, oh, why is this? It's just the way it is. It's just the setup. So if you want to train your brain to get off that hamster wheel, kind of like Groundhog Day, what do you think you need to do? It's really quite simple. You need to change your thoughts.
You need to change the way you think about things. Lean into thoughts that are going to serve you. Lean into thoughts that are going to motivate you. Because here's the deal. Action is always preceded by a feeling. And a feeling is created by your thoughts. And when I say action, I can also say action or inaction. So when you have those automated thoughts of, oh, I just don't feel like it, I don't have the time, what's the use, I'm too tired, I'll do it later, which are really excuses, and you know that. And these are burned into your subconscious mind. So when you have those thoughts, what are you going to do? Are you going to feel motivated? Of course not.
So you have to think different thoughts. Thoughts, well, here's what I'm going to share with you. There were many, okay, I want to give you two examples because your results in your life boil down to your decisions and how you think is a decision. It truly is. And I know that thinking can be hard work and staying in the, when staying in the cave is a whole lot easier. And sometimes we don't even know that that's what we do. But if you want to see a different results, then you have to decide to think on purpose with intention and with discipline. And we've all heard the saying, if nothing changes, nothing changes. Okay, I want to share with you before we close, two stories, two different time frames in my life. And I credit this to my dad for, I think, teaching me how to think differently in a way that really wasn't intentional.
But I remember back when I was in my 30s, which is many decades ago, and I was a runner. I did competitive running. I did a couple triathlons. And I just loved movement because of my dad. And so there were, listen, there were a lot of mornings when I didn't quote unquote feel like running. My kids were little. I had to make arrangements. I had every excuse in the, oh, I can't, you know, I got to do this and I got to do that. And this is what came to my mind. You know, Penny, there's people... a couple blocks away because we had a hospital. The local hospital was a couple blocks away. They couldn't run if they wanted to. They're sick. They're incapable. Maybe they have a broken bone. Maybe they had back surgery. And there are people in wheelchairs. And there are people who have physical disabilities. And they would give anything to run. I tell you what, that... in thought process created in me this, not really shame, but it was like, oh my gosh, here I am healthy, capable, able. And really once I got out on that trail, man, it wasn't two blocks away from home running. And I'm like, how, why did I pause on this? Why did I even pause on this? Because running takes energy and your brain doesn't like you to, it likes to conserve energy. It doesn't like you to expend it. Crazy. I know.
And there's a reason for it. It's a deep science, and that will be in my program, The 6D Difference. But for this podcast, I just want to share with you that your brain wants you to conserve energy. So that's what got those thoughts. Those thoughts are what motivated me or inspired me. to take action. They made me feel like the most blessed person in the world because I was able to do it. I could do it. So then I put my tennis shoes on and out the door I went after I made arrangements, you know, for the kids. I didn't leave the kids alone. And then fast forward to in my late 40s, I went through a divorce after being married 25 years. And I want to tell you, I was on the biggest pity party stage Oh, I won't even go into detail, but I'd lay into bed in the morning and I would think, why even get up? I'm not a wife anymore. I'm not a mom anymore, which was ridiculous.
Of course, I was a mom, but I wanted, you know, I wanted to feel sorry for myself because that, you know, that's what we like to do, I guess. And I don't know why. And then, boom, my dad's words would come in, whether I wanted him to or. or not because this is the works this is the power and this is where your subconscious thought patterns serve you a lot of times they don't but this was automated and burned in my brain and that was this my dad would say when that going gets tough the tough get going and the other one that he would say was can't never did nothing I'm getting emotional right now because as I'm recording this, I'm looking at a picture on the wall in front of my desk with my dad and I. I miss that man with all my heart.
But those two sentences, those two phrases have been burned in my brain since I was probably in my 30s. When the going gets tough, the tough get going and can't never did nothing. And if you need to burn those into your brain or write them on your, I used to write, cards, three by five index cards and post them on my mirror. So I would look at them in the morning. Those are the kinds of things because when you read it, it's a thought and those, that thought will create a feeling and that feeling will create an action. But those are the things that got me out of bed, shot me out of bed and like, get those shoes on. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You went through a little hiccup in your life. We all do. It's the design of life and nobody escapes it.
So I'd get on those shoes and it was the best medicine in the world for me. So rather than wait for motivation to hit you, my friends, it's not going to happen. Your results in your life boils down to your decisions. How you think is a decision. So you have to decide the thoughts that you want to think on purpose and with intention and discipline. And like I said, as time goes on, those thoughts will soon start running the show for you. Because again, if nothing changes, nothing changes. I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to join me today. Don't wait for motivations, my friends. It doesn't come. It doesn't come. You've got to be responsible. Move forward on the things that you can look at as tough. It's not that hard. It really isn't that hard. Once you've done it, you're like, hey, look at me. Good for me.
So carry on through the day. Have a wonderful rest of your day and week, and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.