No single motivation is strong enough to carry you through the hard things in...

No single motivation is strong enough to carry you through the hard things in life.

Not getting in shape. Not building a business. Not staying married. Not raising kids. Not writing a book or fixing your life.

Any goal that matters, really matters, requires more than one reason to keep going. Because no matter how much you believe in that one motivation now, it will fade. Every motivation is unstable when taken alone. Feelings shift. Contexts change. What felt urgent last week might feel irrelevant today. That’s why people fall off. They tie their effort to one fragile thread, and when it frays, they collapse. The solution? Build a suite of motivations. A full set. Positive and negative. Things you want to escape. Things you want to move toward. Things that scare you. Things that inspire you. Things that feel sacred.

You need that variety. Because when one motive weakens, another steps up. That’s what keeps you stable. That’s what keeps you moving.

Here’s the metaphor: Imagine a carriage pulled by four horses. If they’re all pulling in different directions, the carriage goes nowhere. You waste energy. You strain against yourself.

But when all the horses are aligned, even if they’re not the fastest horses in the world, you move forward. Smoothly. Powerfully. Sustainably.

That’s what motivation should feel like. Aligned. Focused. Disciplined.

And this is one of the few areas where discipline actually is the solution, Not discipline to force movement, But discipline to align your motivations so movement becomes natural. If you’re finding it hard to do what you know is right for you, Your problem isn’t willpower. It’s that your motivations are pulling in opposite directions. Fix the alignment. And the movement will follow.