I heard this quote again a few weeks back on the Rich Roll podcast, and I guess it was at a time where I either needed to hear it, or was ready to again reprocess its message. Because I normally have bucketed this message into my fitness pursuits in the past - but this time, I have started to more widely think about how true this is. And so I decided to write about it this week. I hope it helps -

There are a handful of ideas that have routinely change the way I live my life. The ones that seem to resonate the most with my peanut brain aren't complicated, and they certainly aren't new, but they’ve proven themselves over and over again in moments where I needed them most.

"Mood follows action" has readily been one of those ideas for me. It's a phrase that sounds almost too simple to deserve much attention, yet I've found it applies to nearly every meaningful part of life. The more I've paid attention to it, the more I've realized how often we accidentally live by the opposite belief - that once we feel motivated, energized, confident, or inspired, we'll finally begin. The problem is that those feelings rarely arrive on schedule.

For a long time, I believed motivation was something you waited for. That is simply came and it went, and when it was around, it was your job to simply take advantage of those stretches and get as much out of them as you could.

Pre-my fitness and personal development journey, I assumed disciplined people simply woke up wanting to work and exercised because they enjoyed it more than everyone else. Whenever I didn't feel ready, I interpreted that emotion as evidence that I shouldn't begin yet. I told myself I'd start writing once I felt creative, tackle the difficult project once my head was clearer, or get back into the gym once my energy returned. Looking back, I wasn't waiting for motivation, I was waiting for permission. The irony, of course, is that motivation almost never showed up first. It was usually waiting for me on the other side of the work.

One of the most freeing realizations I've had is that while I have surprisingly little control over the thoughts that enter my mind or the emotions they create, I have almost complete control over what I do next. Anxiety may appear without asking. Frustration may show up because of an email, a poor night's sleep, or something entirely outside of my control. But between whatever I happen to be feeling and the next action I choose lies the only part of the equation that truly belongs to me. That small space is where nearly every meaningful improvement in my life has started.

I've noticed this pattern most clearly whenever I feel overwhelmed (often a simple result of procrastination or taking on too many things at the same time). Stress has an incredible ability to convince us that we need more thinking when, in reality, what we usually need is movement.

When the inbox is overflowing, deadlines are stacking up, or a project feels impossibly large, my instinct is often to mentally rehearse every possible outcome before taking the first step. I make another list, reorganize my priorities for the third time, convince myself I just need a little more clarity before I can begin. Yet the feeling of overwhelm almost never disappears through thinking alone. It begins to dissolve the moment I answer the first email, make the first phone call, or spend fifteen uninterrupted minutes working on the task I've been avoiding. Very little has objectively changed in that short amount of time, but internally everything feels different because progress has replaced uncertainty. Action doesn't eliminate the workload; it eliminates the helplessness.

Exercise has always been one of the clearest reminders of this principle for me. There are plenty of mornings when I don't feel like training. My legs are heavy, I'm tired from the previous day, and I can think of half a dozen reasons why skipping today's workout would be perfectly reasonable. If I judged whether I should exercise based solely on how I felt beforehand, I'd miss far more workouts than I'd care to admit.

Yet I honestly can't remember finishing a hard run or a strength session wishing I hadn't done it. Somewhere along the way, my breathing changes, my mind clears, and problems that seemed overwhelming an hour earlier become manageable again. I didn't need energy before the workout. The workout created the energy. I didn't need a better mood to exercise. Exercise produced the better mood.

Writing this newsletter has followed the exact same pattern. Every week, there is some version of the same internal conversation telling me that I don't really have anything worthwhile to say. Some weeks the blank page feels inviting, but many weeks it feels intimidating. If I waited until I felt inspired before opening the document, there would have been dozens of Sundays where nothing was ever published.

Instead, I've learned to trust the process rather than the feeling. The first few paragraphs often feel forced. Ideas don't connect as easily as I'd like them to. Then, almost without fail, something shifts. One sentence sparks another, an analogy appears that wasn't there twenty minutes earlier, and the piece slowly begins to reveal itself. Inspiration rarely walks through the front door before I start writing, or even consuming content to produce the ideas. More often, it climbs in through a window after I've already been working for a while.

I've started noticing this dynamic in surprisingly ordinary places, which is really the driving force for writing about it this week.

Think about the dishes sitting in your sink after dinner. Nobody stands in the kitchen suddenly overwhelmed by an intense desire to clean them. You wash the first plate because it needs to be done, and somewhere around the third or fourth dish you've stopped thinking about whether you wanted to start in the first place.

The same thing happens when you finally organize the garage you've been avoiding, begin the report you've procrastinated on all week, or lace up your shoes for a walk you almost skipped. The willingness to continue rarely exists before the first action. The first action creates the willingness.

Parenthood has reinforced this lesson in ways I never expected. There have been those nights when Levi wakes up long before sunrise and every instinct tells me to stay in bed. In those moments, I certainly don't feel excited about losing sleep. But the interesting thing is how quickly that emotional state changes once I'm actually holding him and enjoying that one-on-one time.

The frustration I felt thirty seconds earlier gives way to something entirely different because the action itself changed the emotional landscape. It’s a fantastic reminder that feelings are often far less permanent than they seem while we're experiencing them. They're constantly being rewritten by what we choose to do next.

The more I've reflected on this idea, the more I think we've unintentionally built a culture that overvalues emotional readiness. We talk constantly about finding motivation, protecting motivation, or rediscovering motivation, as though it's some scarce natural resource that determines what we're capable of accomplishing. In reality, motivation behaves much more like interest in a bank account. Small deposits of action create momentum, momentum compounds into confidence, and confidence eventually becomes the motivation we were waiting for all along. Most people have simply reversed the order of operations.

That doesn't mean emotions should be ignored or dismissed. There are “seasons” where grief deserves to be felt, burnout requires genuine rest, and anxiety or depression call for support that extends well beyond simply pushing through discomfort.

"Mood follows action" isn't an argument against emotional awareness. It's a reminder that many of the ordinary emotional states we experience each day - procrastination, resistance, sluggishness, uncertainty, self-doubt - aren't solved by waiting for a different feeling to appear. More often than not, they're solved by taking one small step before our emotions have had a chance to vote.

Looking back, nearly every worthwhile decision I've made has followed this pattern. Training for races didn't begin because I felt motivated every morning. This newsletter didn't survive because inspiration conveniently showed up every week. Difficult conversations weren't easier because I suddenly became fearless. None of those experiences started with certainty. They started with action, and certainty slowly emerged afterward. Confidence, discipline, and resilience weren't prerequisites; they were the byproducts of repeatedly choosing behavior over emotion.

That's why I keep coming back to this simple phrase. It reminds me that my feelings deserve to be acknowledged, but they don't deserve to become my compass. My behavior is ultimately far more predictive of the person I'll become than whatever emotion happens to be visiting today. Every meaningful life is built through thousands of ordinary decisions where someone chose to begin before they felt ready.

If you find yourself anxious this week - understand the power you have in your hands to do something about it. Have an internal belief that taking action will help you regain control.

If you find yourself sluggish - understand the power in your hands to do something about it. Get into the gym. Be consistent about it. Let it compound and build on itself day by day, one positive action at a time.

If you find yourself waiting this week, for more confidence, more clarity, more energy, or simply a better mood, I hope you'll remember that you've probably reversed the equation. The feeling you're looking for may not be missing at all. It may simply be waiting for you a few steps down the road, ready to meet you once you've had the courage to start walking toward it.