You know that feeling when you start something new? Maybe it’s a new workout plan or a new diet. You’re super motivated, even if the thing you’re trying to do is really difficult.
And then one day… that spark’s just gone.
Suddenly hitting the snooze button again or scrolling on TikTok feels way more urgent than the thing you said mattered to you. Your brain starts negotiating with you—saying you’ll do it tomorrow, or after you’ve done something else, or when you feel more motivated.
But that feeling may never come.
I don’t want you to look back on your life and realize you didn’t do the things you really wanted to do just because they were hard.
There’s a version of you that shows up every day, doesn’t waste time, and builds the life you actually want. This will help you become that version of you—help you understand what’s motivating you, why you resist doing hard things, and how to make doing those hard things feel effortless.
Why Do We Resist Doing Hard Things Even When We KNow They Are Good for Us?
It comes down to beating what Steven Pressfield wrote about in his book The War of Art (Amazon affiliate link). He calls it
The Resistance—the feeling that stands in the way of where you are now and where you want to be.
There are two main ways it shows up:
The loud way and the quiet way.
The Loud Way
It’s like a kid being told to go to bed when they don’t want to—so they throw a tantrum.
Your brain does the same thing when you tell yourself you need to clean the kitchen and cook a healthy dinner instead of watching another episode on Netflix.
Just like the kid who doesn’t want to go to bed (even though you know they need to sleep), when you face a task that feels overwhelming or uncomfortable, your limbic system kicks in. Its job is to detect threats and keep you safe—but it’s not very good at distinguishing between real danger and emotional discomfort.
This is called an amygdala hijack, where your emotional brain overrides your logical brain and makes it hard to act on reason—or even think about your long-term goals.
Name It to Tame It
The good news is, you can train your brain not to overreact.
Studies on emotional regulation show that if you name your emotion, even if you just do it in your mind, it helps activate your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for reasoning, decision-making, and self-control.
Psychologist Dan Siegel (Amazon affiliate link) calls it:
“Name it to tame it.”
So when you feel the resistance rising, try to name the feeling that’s causing it. Say:
“I’m feeling anxious,” or “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
You’re acknowledging the feeling rather than dismissing it. And then you can move forward.
Over time, this rewires your response to hard things. Your brain learns that discomfort isn’t dangerous—it’s just a signal.
The Quiet Way
The second way resistance shows up is with a much quieter voice than a tantrum. It’s your ego.
It’s the part of your brain that’s trying to protect who you think you are.
So when you try to do something hard—like start a business or speak up in a meeting—it’s thinking:
“If this doesn’t go well, it’ll look like you’re not good enough. So you better not try at all.”
Your ego would rather keep you safely mediocre than risk your self-image being challenged and becoming something better.
So when you feel that resistance, that’s a sign for you—not to avoid the thing—but to step past your ego’s comfort zone.
Even if you fail, your identity stretches. You show your ego that you can survive that discomfort.
There will always be two stories:
- The one where you listened to your ego and didn’t try.
- The one where you acknowledged it and did it anyway, and grew into the person you wanted to be.
Train Dopamine to Work for You
You want to work on the meaningful stuff—like your new creative project, your side hustle, your weight loss plan.
But when it comes time to actually do it, suddenly you’re scrolling Instagram, watching YouTube Shorts, or deep into a game you didn’t even plan to open.
You’re not lazy. You’re overstimulated.
And the chemical behind it all is dopamine.
Your brain releases dopamine to get you to go after something—not necessarily to enjoy it when it arrives. That’s what makes modern life really tricky.
The Rat Experiment
In the 1950s, scientists did an experiment with rats.
They wired a lever to stimulate the rats’ brains—specifically the parts associated with dopamine—and gave the rats access to this lever.
The rats pressed the lever over and over. They ignored food and water. Some even collapsed from exhaustion.
And while we’re not rats in a lab, we are pressing our own dopamine levers every day—by scrolling social media and snacking on junk food.
Why It’s Hard to Start Meaningful Work
When it’s so easy to get a dopamine hit from just picking up your phone, it becomes harder for you to want to choose something else.
Your creative project won’t give you a dopamine hit right away.
Your workout will feel really hard at the beginning because your baseline level of dopamine is set too high.
You might remember from school biology something called homeostasis—your body likes balance.
If you’re constantly flooding your brain with high dopamine, it downregulates your dopamine receptors. Which means it takes more dopamine to feel the same hit.
Regular life—like work, conversations, and hobbies—can start to feel numb by comparison.
Dopamine Detox
This is where the idea of a dopamine detox comes in.
It’s about resetting your brain’s sensitivity to dopamine.
Try this:
- Embrace boredom for one day a week.
- No screens. Go for a walk. Sit with your thoughts.
- Read something that doesn’t give you a dopamine spike, like non-fiction.
Your brain will hate it at first. You’ll feel really bored. But that’s the point.
After removing artificial stimulation, your brain will start looking for creative ways to entertain itself. You might pick up an old instrument, or finally sort out that overflowing cupboard because you just don’t want to sit and be bored anymore!
Reward After Effort
If you’ve gotten into the habit of giving yourself a treat before you do the hard thing, like a snack or scroll, you’re spiking your dopamine too early.
Go back to what you did in school:
Do your homework first, then go play.
Train your brain to associate dopamine with meaningful effort.
Practice Ignoring Distractions
Train yourself to ignore the little distracting thoughts that pop in like:
“Oh, I just need to check if I have a notification.”
If you don’t give into them, you’re rewiring your brain—telling it what’s actually important to you.
Choose Better Dopamine Sources
Dopamine is useful for motivating us. But you get to choose where it comes from.
Are you getting dopamine from things that:
- Move you forward?
(Finishing a script, working out, building something) - Or things that feel good in the moment but leave you empty later?
9 Hacks for Doing Difficult Things
As well as the dopamine reset, I’ve got nine quick things you can do today to make doing hard things feel easier.
1. Break It Down
If you want to write a whole book, it feels overwhelming, but writing a paragraph is totally doable. Big goals are great for direction. They’re your north star.
But if you’re relying on that giant goal to fuel your motivation every day, you’re setting yourself up to fail. Focus on doing something small enough that you don’t need to feel inspired to start.
By taking action, you start to build momentum, and momentum will beat motivation every time.
2. Treat It Like an Experiment
When something feels overwhelming or scary, treat it like an experiment. You’re just doing a test run and gathering data.
It shifts your brain from fear to curiosity; the pressure drops. And if it sucks, that’s useful because you’ve learned something and got some feedback.
3. Connect to Your “Why”
Filming these YouTube videos is really hard for me as an introvert. But I really want to help other people. And that “why” is more important than my fear of getting on camera.
To peel back the layers on why it’s important to you, keep asking yourself, “Why do you want this?”
and then ask yourself again and again and again until you hit something real.
For example, you’re stuck in a job that you hate, but that job is paying for courses that are getting you closer to your dream. It connects to something way bigger in your future.
4. Ask “What Would Other You Do?”
Sometimes I can’t do something because it feels too scary, or I really just don’t feel like it.
I think, “What would other Emily do?”
She’s the version who starts. She writes the first paragraph of her book. She shows up at her music lesson even if she’s going to suck at learning a new technique, but she feels proud that she tried.
Every time I choose to show up, I’m moving more towards that version of me.
5. Become the Person
If you want something to stick, then stop treating it like a goal and start treating it like a part of who you are. Don’t say to yourself, “I want to get fit.” Because your brain hears that and thinks, “I’m the kind of person who wants to be fit, but I’m not.”
And then guess what?
The people who aren’t fit don’t feel like going to the gym, so they don’t go. Instead, tell yourself, “I’m an active person. Of course, I go to the gym.” Or, “I’m a writer. Of course, I write.”
If your ego thinks you’re already a writer, there’s going to be less resistance to do tasks to do with writing.
6. Give Yourself a Gift
I don’t always feel like cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, but I know I enjoy going into a clean kitchen in the morning. I remind myself that future me is going to love this.
It’s like self-care but time travel. You’re not doing the task for now you. You’re doing it for the version of you in the future.
7. Just Do the Setup
Sometimes the hardest part is starting. So don’t start the task. Start the setup for the task.
If it’s raining and I have to walk the dog, I don’t really feel like going outside. But I don’t have to feel ready. I just grab her lead, put her coat on, put my coat on, and by the time I’ve done that, I’m like, “Well, I’m already dressed. I might as well take her for a walk.”
The momentum carries me forward to actually start the thing.
8. Try the 5-Minute Rule
If I’ve tried all the other hacks in this list and they’re still not working, this one always does. I grab this little timer that I keep on my desk, and I set the timer for just 5 minutes.
It’s much easier to tolerate doing something difficult when you know that it’s going to finish soon. But here’s the thing that always gets me: even if it’s something I really don’t want to do, when I’m 5 minutes in, I usually just keep going.
But even if I don’t carry on after 5 minutes, it’s still 5 minutes of progress I wouldn’t have made otherwise.
9. Make It Fun 🙂
So here are some quick-fire ways you can turn boring tasks into something a bit more exciting.
- Create a rule where you’re only allowed to do something you love when you’re working on that hard thing. For example, you’re only allowed to listen to your favorite audiobook while you exercise, and you’ll find that you’re going to the gym more and you’re running more just so that you can hear the next chapter.
- Or maybe have a playlist of your favorite songs which you can only listen to when you’re doing something really challenging.
- If you’ve got a bunch of micro-tasks, you could use a six-sided dice, assign a task to each number, and then roll it and see which one comes up.
- To be even more creative with tasks, you could imagine you’re somebody else doing it. So if you’re vacuuming, you could imagine you’re Freddy Mercury in the “I Want to Break Free” music video, you’re Marie Kondo when you’re tidying up a cupboard, or you’re Gordon Ramsay when you’re cooking.
All these tricks can definitely help to make a task feel more fun. But if you’ve ever wondered why some things still feel like a slog no matter what you do, it might be because of what’s driving you.
Because when your goals are aligned with what you genuinely care about, motivation becomes a whole lot easier. To figure out what actually gives you a sense of fulfillment and purpose and how to build your goals around that, check out this video.
Watch the video on YouTube
Books and resources
📖 The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – https://amzn.to/3EAJK5Y
📖 The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson – https://amzn.to/4cIrWTb
⏲️ My productivity timer – https://amzn.to/3XV5gcd
References
Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Matthew D Lieberman 1, Naomi I Eisenberger, Molly J Crockett, Sabrina M Tom, Jennifer H Pfeifer, Baldwin M Way. Psychol Sci. 2007 May;18(5):421-8. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17576282
Dopamine. Kauê Machado Costa, Geoffrey Schoenbaum. 8 August 2022. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982222010223#:~:text=The%20first%20hint%20that%20dopamine,itself%20could%20function%20as%20a