You’re not unmotivated. You’re probably low on capacity.

Can’t stick to exercise? It’s motivation, apparently. Can’t get off your phone? Motivation. Can’t meditate, journal, drink two litres of water and become an entirely different person by Tuesday? Motivation, always motivation.

I keep noticing this – with clients, with friends, even in my own kitchen at seven in the morning when I’m too tired to think straight. We’ve made it the answer to everything.

And I’m just… so bored of it.

Motivation is unreliable. It comes and goes like the weather. Some days it’s there, some days it isn’t. You can’t build a life around it any more than you can build a house on sand.

What matters more, I think, is capacity.

I’ve been thinking about this because earlier this week I found myself standing in the hallway, unable to do something perfectly reasonable. I can’t even remember what it was now – put the washing on, perhaps, or reply to an email. Something small. But I just stood there, fully aware of what needed doing, and simply could not do it. It wasn’t avoidance. It wasn’t even reluctance. It was the plain fact that I had run out of whatever fuel makes those small actions possible.

There’s a subtle but big difference between won’t and can’t.

Capacity is not about willpower. It’s not about discipline or wanting it badly enough. It’s about what your body and nervous system can realistically offer you right now.

If you’re not sleeping well, if you’re feeling really frazzled, if you’re carrying work, family, grief, relationships, perimenopause, or simply the quiet and relentless weight of keeping a life running, let alone the living with uncertainty, the fall of democracy or the dystopian nightmare we’re currently in, then asking yourself to “push through” becomes an act of self-betrayal.

Capacity asks a different question.

Not “what should I be doing?”
But “what is actually possible today?”

And sometimes the answer is less than you hoped.
And sometimes it’s much less. Which I know can feel really disappointing.

We live in a culture that encourages extremes. Do everything, perfectly. Or give up entirely. Push until you collapse. Or stay in bed and decide there’s no point at all.

Neither honours the body you live in.

Real care often looks smaller than we think. Softer. More honest.

It might look like choosing the tiniest version of something – a five-minute walk instead of a run, reading just one page instead of a whole chapter, replying to two emails instead of clearing your entire inbox, sending a voice note instead of having the full conversation. It might look like rest. It might look like letting today be exactly what it is, without demanding that it prove anything.

And maybe the work isn’t to force yourself into a different version of you, but to respect the actual, slightly tired human who showed up today.

That’s enough.

I’m talking more about this in Episode 5 of our podcast, through an exercise lens, because if there’s anywhere motivation gets weaponised, it’s there. If that’s your sticky spot too, you’ll feel very seen.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts or here on Spotify.