Are you struggling to summon any motivation for 2025? I bet I know what your issue is. You’re trying to find reasons to act that are healthy, intrinsic, and tied to a broader community ethos that strives to uplift people’s lives through sport.
Here’s a tip – stop trying to tap into sources of motivation your therapist would approve of and lean on lower, uglier emotions.
For example, don’t try to get fit so you can complete more miles at the local fondo for charity. Instead, create a ‘Hate Poster.’ I guarantee the latter will make you faster. Here’s what you do.
1. Grievance Archeology
Remember, if someone doesn't want to sleep with you, on some level, they're saying you're not worth reproducing with, and your bloodline should die.
First, you must perform some grievance archeology.
Grievance archeology? I thought so.
Grievance archeology requires that you get a piece of paper and a pencil and set a timer for 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes, your job is to remember every person in your life who has ever wronged you, doubted you, or otherwise diminished or dismissed you as not even worthy to look at a bike, much less ride one fast onto the piece of paper. Fill it.
Also, don’t be afraid to expand your search for grievance farther afield, especially in the romantic department, as nothing hurts quite as bad as someone you want to be with looking at you and seeing a waste of time. Remember, if someone doesn’t want to sleep with you, on some level, they’re saying you’re not worth reproducing with, and your bloodline should die.
Ideally, you’ll come up with at least ten separate people who said absolutely savage, unforgivable things to you that nearly led you to jump off a roof, things you’d forgotten and probably should leave buried deep in the permafrost of your unconscious. Unthaw them anyway.
Also, don’t limit your grievance search to just verbal. It’s possible that the greatest insults you’ve suffered in life were non-verbal; they were a look, maybe a withering sneer of condescension from a fellow racer, or the blank, unrepentant eyes of someone breaking up with you. Is anything like that in there? Great! Add it to the pile.
Once you’re done, you should have at least ten profoundly painful grievances. Got em’?
2. Stalk and Arrange
That's where the face of your deepest hatred goes, the person who arouses the most anguish and retributive rage in you.
Now, the hard part is that you need to find pictures of these people online to add to your poster. It’s getting harder and harder these days to find anyone online, with apparently everyone but Boomers engaged in some form of digital detox. I’m old enough to remember the early days of Facebook when people would dump every picture from a house party online and tag people in it! Those were simpler times.
Anyway, do your best to find some photos of people responsible for your deepest hurt. Once you have them, what you’re going to do is make a collage with five squares, arranged not so one row has three squares and another two, but with one of the squares larger and overlayed in the middle of the two squares – that’s where the face of your deepest hatred goes, the person who arouses the most anguish and retributive rage in you.
Now, the hard part is that you need to find pictures of these people online to add to your poster. It’s getting harder and harder these days to find anyone online, with apparently everyone but Boomers engaged in some form of digital detox. I’m old enough to remember the early days of Facebook when people would dump every picture from a house party online and tag people in it! Those were simpler times.
Anyway, do your best to find some photos of people responsible for your deepest hurt. Once you have them, what you’re going to do is make a collage with five squares, arranged not so one row has three squares and another two, but with one of the squares larger and overlayed in the middle of the two squares – that’s where the face of your deepest hatred goes, the person who arouses the most anguish and retributive rage in you.
That last step is important – remember, no matter how smart you are, you’re a human, just a simple creature, and the best, clearest motivation is going to be the simplest, like glancing at one face every morning that represents everyone who has doubted, diminished, and dismissed you. Make sure that face is the purest distillation of that hatred. The other four faces are just there for backup if you slip and start forgiving them.
3. Quotes and Placement
Again, you're trying to produce motivation arousal through a visual shortcut of a face and a quote, so keep the words as tight and hurtful as possible.
OK—moving on. If any of these people have a negative quote (as opposed to a look), put it underneath their profile picture to save you the trouble of remembering what they said that hurt you. Again, you’re trying to produce motivation arousal through a visual shortcut of a face and a quote, so keep the words as tight and hurtful as possible.
And now you’re done, except for one final, critical step – put the poster in a place you’re going to see it every morning first thing, no matter what. You see, the key to all of this is that as you start each day and your mind slowly coheres after sleep, you want to begin your day by priming your mind with the poison of your haters that you’ve perfectly encapsulated and enshrined in your poster. Their derision and doubt will fuel you throughout the day and lift you to heights you would never have reached with a balanced, healthy motivation.
If you think there’s a ‘just kidding’ coming in this essay, you’re going to be disappointed. I’m 100% serious about everything I just described, even though I recognize it’s probably deeply irresponsible and probably eventually counterproductive motivational strategy.
The thing is, the internet is filled with coaches carefully arguing, as they’ve been told in their ‘How to Be a Coach’ class, that one should always encourage athletes to develop intrinsic (as opposed to extrinsic) positive (as opposed to negative) motivation. They’re probably right.
However, back in the real world working with real athletes, I’ve noticed that often what motivates athletes isn’t the pursuit of some lofty ideal but pettiness, bitterness, and beef – basically every single social dynamic you’d find on a middle school playground channeled into pedaling. It might be disappointing, but it’s true.