The Motivation Myth: Is Willpower Really Enough? 

“If you want it badly enough, you’ll make it happen.”

We hear this idea everywhere. If you really want something, work harder, stay disciplined, don’t give up, and eventually you will get there. And when someone succeeds, we often explain that success through determination and willpower. When someone gives up, on the other hand, we are surprisingly quick to assume that perhaps they simply didn’t want it badly enough.

I used to think there was a lot of truth in this idea. And to some extent, there is. Motivation matters. Persistence matters. The willingness to keep going when things become difficult certainly matters. But over the years, both psychology and my own experiences have made me question whether we sometimes give willpower a little too much credit. Because our motivation does not develop in isolation. It develops while we are surrounded by other people, conversations, expectations, examples, and sometimes limitations.

We Borrow Our Sense of What Is Possible

Think about the people around you. Have you ever talked to someone who was genuinely excited about learning something new and suddenly found yourself feeling curious too? Or met someone who changed careers, went back to school, moved to another country, started a business, or wrote a book and thought, “Maybe I could do something like that too.”

The opposite can happen just as easily. Imagine sharing an idea you are genuinely excited about and repeatedly hearing, “That’s too risky,” “Why would you do that?” “Be realistic,” or “That probably won’t work.” One comment may not change much. But when messages like these become part of the environment around us, even ideas we once felt excited about can gradually begin to seem unrealistic.

This does not necessarily mean that we suddenly became less ambitious or less capable. Sometimes what changed was simply our perception of what was possible.

Psychology helps explain why. One important concept is social norms, the often-unspoken expectations we develop by observing what the people around us consider normal, desirable, acceptable, or achievable. We constantly receive these signals, usually without consciously thinking about them.

If the people around you regularly learn new things, learning feels normal. If people around you take thoughtful risks, trying something new may feel less frightening. If the people you know frequently discuss ideas, careers, education, books, businesses, and new possibilities, exploring something different may not seem particularly unusual.

But the same goal can feel very different in an environment where new ideas are routinely met with skepticism. Slowly, questions can begin appearing in our minds: Maybe this isn’t realistic. Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I’m not ready. Maybe people like me don’t do things like this.

Sometimes we think those thoughts are entirely our own. They may not be.

Sometimes We Need to See Someone Else Do It

Albert Bandura’s work on Social Learning Theory, and later Social Cognitive Theory, offers another way of understanding this. We do not learn only from our own successes and failures. We also learn by observing other people. We watch what they attempt, how they respond when things go wrong, what happens when they persist, and which behaviors appear to be rewarded or discouraged.

Seeing someone else succeed can be particularly powerful when that person feels somehow similar to us. Their success provides more than inspiration. It provides evidence. Something that previously existed only as an abstract possibility suddenly becomes something a real person has actually done.

This connects closely with another important concept in Bandura’s work: self-efficacy, or our belief in our ability to perform a particular behavior or accomplish a particular goal. What fascinates me about self-efficacy is that sometimes our actual abilities have not changed at all. What changes is what we believe we can do with those abilities.

Yesterday, something may have seemed impossible. Then you meet someone who has done it, hear their story, and realize that their path was not perfect either. They were uncertain. They made mistakes. They had setbacks. Suddenly the goal may still look difficult, but it no longer looks impossible.

And psychologically, there is a huge difference between difficult and impossible.

What Has Your Environment Made “Normal”?

Consider how differently the same decisions can be perceived depending on the environment around us. Going back to school at 40, changing careers after spending years building one, moving to another country and starting again, writing your first book, applying for a position when you do not meet every qualification, or learning something you once believed you were “not good at” can sound unrealistic in one environment and completely normal in another.

The action itself has not changed. The psychological environment surrounding it has.

I have experienced this in my own life as well. Moving to Canada after spending many years in academia meant that there were moments when I had to learn again, prove myself again, and become comfortable with being new at things despite having years of experience behind me. Later, writing Core Mind meant stepping into another unfamiliar space. Academic writing was familiar to me; writing about psychology for a broader audience was something different.

Looking back, I can certainly say that motivation played a role in both experiences. But motivation was not the whole story. The people I encountered, the examples I saw, the conversations I had, and the environments I entered also influenced what I could imagine doing next.

Sometimes one person asking “Why not?” can make an enormous difference when you have spent too much time hearing “Why would you?”

Environment Is Powerful, but It Is Not Destiny

None of this means that our environment completely determines our lives. Nor does it mean that surrounding yourself with successful or ambitious people will automatically make you successful. Human behavior is much more complicated than that.

Personal responsibility matters. Persistence matters. Skills, resources, opportunities, socioeconomic circumstances, personality, previous experiences, and sometimes simple timing all matter. Two people can be placed in very similar environments and still make completely different choices.

The point is not that motivation is unimportant. The point is that motivation does not operate in a vacuum.

Our environment can reinforce certain behaviors and discourage others. It can provide examples of what can be achieved. It can influence our expectations and gradually shape what we consider normal. Most importantly, it can expand or shrink our perception of what might be possible for us.

Maybe We Are Asking the Wrong Question

When we feel stuck, we tend to turn inward. We ask ourselves why we are not motivated enough, why we cannot be more disciplined, or why we keep hesitating. Sometimes those are exactly the questions we need to ask. But perhaps not always.

Sometimes it may be more useful to look around and ask different questions. What kinds of conversations am I hearing every day? What happens when someone around me has an ambitious idea? What kinds of lives and choices have become “normal” in my environment? Do the people around me make possibilities feel larger or smaller?

And perhaps the most interesting question of all is this:

What has my environment quietly taught me to believe about what someone like me can do?

I increasingly think that this question deserves more attention. Because sometimes we do not need another motivational quote telling us to try harder. We may need to understand the environment in which we are trying so hard to stay motivated.

The people around us do more than influence our behavior. Through countless small conversations, reactions, examples, and expectations, they can gradually influence the boundaries of what we imagine for ourselves.

Your environment doesn’t just surround you. It can help shape your sense of what’s possible.

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