Why We Lose Steam on Ideas and Intentions That Matter
It's not about discipline. It's not about motivation. The answer is more fascinating, and more hopeful, than we might think.
What if losing steam on an idea or intention wasn't about discipline at all, but about where we were when it found us?"Think about the moment the idea or intention came. Maybe we were on a walk. Just woke up. In a conversation that cracked something open.
We felt clear. Expansive. Like a wider, truer version of ourselves had just shown up. And in that state, the idea or intention didn't just seem possible. It seemed obvious. Like it was already ours.
But then life comes back in. The emails. The doubts. The fatigue. The old stories. And we drop back into our normal, default way of being.
And from that place… it feels distant. Heavy. Maybe even a little delusional. "What were we thinking?"
But here's what I've come to understand after two decades of working with people on real transformation: the idea or intention didn't change. We changed states.
Our Brains Are Literally Wired Differently When the Idea or Intention Arrives
Most of us chalk this up to dopamine, that the brain spiked on novelty and then the chemical wore off. And yes, that's real. But it's only the surface.
Neuroscience has identified two distinct brain networks that are almost never active at the same time. When we're open, relaxed, walking, dreaming, our Default Mode Network lights up. This is the brain's big picture system. Where insight lives. Where we connect to our deepest sense of self and possibility. (Buckner, Andrews-Hanna & Schacter, 2008, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
But when we drop back into stressed, task-focused, survival mode, a completely different network takes over. Narrow. Analytical. Threat-focused. These two networks are anticorrelated — when one is up, the other goes down. (Fox et al., 2005, PNAS)
Add to that what the research on cortisol shows: chronic stress physically narrows our perception, reducing the range of possibilities our brains can even hold at once. So from a contracted state, the idea or intention doesn't just feel harder. It's genuinely harder to see. (Arnsten, 2009, Nature Reviews Neuroscience)
Abraham Maslow spent years studying what he called peak experiences, moments of unusual clarity, expanded perception, and deep connection to who we really are. He found that in these states, people didn't just feel better. They saw more. They accessed a truer, wider version of themselves. (Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 1962)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's decades of research on flow states found the same pattern: in flow, challenges that normally feel impossible suddenly feel obvious. Same person. Same idea or intention. Different state. Completely different reality. (Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990)
"We're not losing passion. We're losing access to the network where the idea or intention lives."
I see this play out constantly. We all carry two versions of ourselves at any given time. There's the contracted self, shaped by fear, habit, and old conditioning. The one that plays small, stays safe, and calls it being realistic.
And then there's the expanded self. The one that shows up when we're rested, inspired, and connected to something larger than our to-do list. The one that simply knows, without needing to be convinced.
Our idea or intention was born in that expanded state. It belongs there. When we try to execute it from a contracted state, of course it feels hard. We're trying to carry something large through a door that's too small.
This isn't a motivation problem. It's a state problem.
So the question was never "how do we push through?" The real question is "how do we return?"
How do we get back to the version of ourselves that could see this clearly? That felt the truth of it? That knew it was real?
Because that state is always available. It never left. We drifted from it. And the path back isn't more effort or more discipline.
It's remembering.
If the idea or intention has gone quiet,
don't bury it.
Ask yourself: "What would it take to get back to the state where we first saw it?" Start there. That's where it's waiting.
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