60 Motivational Quotes for Hard Times (Not the Hustle Culture Ones)
Most motivational quotes for hard times are written for people who need a push. But some hard times aren’t about pushing. They’re about grief, loss, and circumstances where grit isn’t the point. This article offers 60 quotes organized into five honest categories: for when motivation isn’t even the right frame, for starting rather than finishing, for moving from love rather than fear, for building identity rather than outcomes, and for the quiet unglamorous choice you make anyway. All backed by a clinical frame grounded in behavioral activation research.
Last reviewed: June 2026 by Annie Wright, LMFT
- Greta in the Parking Lot
- For When Motivation Isn’t the Real Problem
- On Starting (Not Finishing)
- On the Difference Between Discipline and Punishment
- On What You’re Building
- Both/And: “Just Do It” Is Sometimes Right. And Sometimes It Isn’t
- The Systemic Lens: The Billion-Dollar Gap Between Who You Are and Who You’re Told to Be
- On Doing It Anyway
- Frequently Asked Questions
Greta in the Parking Lot
It is 7:48 on a Sunday morning and Greta, 44, has been sitting in the 24-hour fitness parking lot for nine minutes. The engine is still running. Her gym bag is in the back seat. She packed it last night with the deliberateness of someone who didn’t trust herself to pack it this morning. On her phone, her gym playlist is paused at the second track. She’d pressed play when she pulled in, then pressed pause again immediately, the way you do when something feels too loud for the moment you’re in.
The Starbucks across the street is dark. Closed. She’d been counting on that Starbucks in a way she hadn’t admitted to herself until right now, when she can see the word CLOSED on the door from where she’s parked. Other people are walking in and out of the gym with their bags and their headphones, doing the thing she packed a bag to do.
Greta’s mother died eight months ago. For twenty-two years, training. Triathlons, early-morning swims, long Sunday rides. Was the structure of her free time. She’d stopped the week her mother went into hospice, and the weeks after, the mornings when she would have been in the water, she’d spent in a different kind of paralysis. She doesn’t know how to explain this to herself: she is not an unmotivated person. She is a person who hasn’t trained in eight months because her mother died.
Here is what she thinks, sitting there with the engine running and the second track paused: I don’t need motivation. I need my mother back. But since that’s not an option, I’m going to try the gym.
She turns the engine off. She gets her bag from the back seat. She does not press play on the playlist yet. That’s fine. She doesn’t have to do it perfectly. She just has to go in.
This article is for Greta, and for everyone who’s been in that parking lot in some form. It’s also for the person who’s not grieving anything specific but who’s been sitting in their own version of that car. Engine running, second track paused. And can’t quite make themselves move. The 60 quotes collected here are organized around five honest frames, not around the premise that what you need is a harder push. Some of them will resonate. Some won’t. Take what’s useful and leave the rest. If you want more on what helps when life gets genuinely hard, the uplifting quotes for hard times collection on this site is a good companion read, and the posts on inspirational quotes to keep going and staying positive in tough times cover related ground.
For When Motivation Isn’t the Real Problem
A lot of times we go looking for motivational quotes when what we actually need isn’t motivation. We need acknowledgment that the circumstances are genuinely hard. We need a frame that makes sense of our stillness. If you’ve lost someone, or you’re in the middle of a medical crisis, or you’ve had the kind of year that reorders your sense of what matters. The standard motivational quote often lands wrong. It sounds like: why aren’t you moving? when the real question is: what are you carrying?
These quotes are for that version of hard times. The kind that calls for a different frame entirely. If you’re working through a period like this with professional support, individual therapy focused on grief and life transitions can help you build a framework that actually fits your life right now.
Behavioral activation is a therapeutic technique grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy, formally developed by Peter Lewinsohn, PhD, clinical psychologist at the University of Oregon, involving the deliberate scheduling of activities correlated with positive mood to interrupt depressive withdrawal. Lewinsohn’s research demonstrated that depression is maintained, in part, by the cycle of avoidance: when we feel low, we stop doing things, which reduces the rewarding experiences that generate positive mood, which deepens the low feeling. Behavioral activation interrupts this cycle by reintroducing activity first. Not waiting for motivation to arrive before moving, but moving in order to generate the internal conditions from which motivation can grow.
In plain terms: The body often leads the mind when motivation is low. You don’t wait to feel motivated to move. You move, and the feeling follows. This is not the same as forcing yourself. It’s understanding how the circuit actually works.
Peter Lewinsohn’s clinical work showed that people in depressive states often feel they need to “feel better first” before they can take action. But the sequence runs the other way. Action generates mood shift. Greta didn’t need to feel motivated to get out of the car. She needed to get out of the car, and the feeling would start to follow. Here are twelve quotes for the times when motivation isn’t the real problem:
- “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”. Zig Ziglar
- “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”. Theodore Roosevelt
- “It is okay to be at a place of struggle. Struggle is just another word for growth.”. Idowu Koyenikan
- “Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity.”. Doug Manning
- “There is no moving on without grief. Grief IS how we move.”. Claire Bidwell Smith, LCPC, author of Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief
- “Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”. Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, author of Daring Greatly
- “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”. J.K. Rowling
- “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”. Mary Anne Radmacher
- “Hard times are not the enemy of a good life. They are part of it.”. Attributed broadly to modern resilience literature
- “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
- “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”. Helen Keller
- “The human capacity for burden is like bamboo. Far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.”. Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
On Starting (Not Finishing)
Motivational culture is obsessed with finishing. The vision board shows the finish line; the quote collection centers the completed goal. But for many people, in many hard seasons, the finish isn’t the operative challenge. Getting started is.
Priya, 38, a systems architect who’d been navigating a brutal eighteen-month stretch that included a job restructuring, a move, and her father’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, described it this way in our work: “I know I’m capable of hard things. I’ve done hard things. I just can’t figure out how to find the door to start the next one.” What she was describing was the specific paralysis that arrives when the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels too large to cross in one step. And no one has given you permission to cross it in fifty very small ones. Lewinsohn’s behavioral activation research is useful here: a “small win” creates a mood-elevating feedback loop that makes the next step feel possible. If you’re in a season like Priya’s, the reasons to keep going collection is a useful companion. These twelve quotes are specifically for starting. Not finishing, not crossing the line. Just the first step.
- “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”. Mark Twain (widely attributed)
- “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”. Lao Tzu
- “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”. Chinese proverb (widely cited)
- “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “The beginning is always today.”. Mary Wollstonecraft
- “Just begin. The rest will follow.”. Widely attributed to Goethe; paraphrase of his broader writing on commitment
- “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”. Arthur Ashe
- “The secret to getting things done is to act.”. Dante Alighieri
- “Action is the antidote to despair.”. Joan Baez (widely attributed)
- “What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”. Ralph Marston
- “Done is better than perfect.”. Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Meta, author of Lean In
- “Well done is better than well said.”. Benjamin Franklin
On the Difference Between Discipline and Punishment
In my work with clients. Particularly women who are driven, ambitious, and who’ve been praised primarily for performance. There’s a pattern I see repeatedly. They’ve trained themselves into a relationship with discipline that’s functionally indistinguishable from punishment. The workout that happens because they’re afraid of what will happen to their body if it doesn’t. The early-morning routine organized around shame rather than desire. The “self-improvement” that is, structurally, a constant verdict that they’re not enough yet.
Nadia, 41, a marketing director who’d spent three years in a discipline-as-punishment relationship with her training, described it this way: “I’d get up at five every morning and do all the things. And I was always exhausted and always a little mean to myself. When my coach asked once why I was training, I couldn’t say anything except ‘because I have to.’ That’s when I knew something was wrong.” Nadia’s shift. From discipline that punished to movement she chose because she genuinely wanted its benefits. Took the better part of a year. If you’re in this territory, executive coaching with a trauma-informed lens can help you look at the relationship between performance, identity, and self-regard without pathologizing your drive.
This distinction comes from Self-Determination Theory, developed by Edward L. Deci, PhD and Richard M. Ryan, PhD, both research psychologists at the University of Rochester whose foundational work on motivation has been published in journals including Psychological Review and American Psychologist. Intrinsic motivation refers to engaging in a behavior because it is inherently satisfying. Because of what it feels like, what it means, who it makes you. Extrinsic motivation refers to engaging in a behavior to earn a reward or avoid a punishment. Decades of research by Deci and Ryan demonstrate that purely extrinsic motivation, especially the kind organized around fear of negative outcomes, tends to be less sustainable and more psychologically costly than intrinsic motivation. And that moving people from extrinsic to intrinsic frames requires supporting their sense of autonomy and competence, not increasing pressure.
In plain terms: Moving your body because you fear what will happen if you don’t is not the same as moving it because it makes you feel like yourself. Both will get you to the gym. Only one of them will still be working five years from now. And only one of them is kind.
Deci and Ryan’s research makes clear what many people sense intuitively: sustainable discipline is organized around values and identity, not fear. These twelve quotes are for people trying to shift from the punitive frame to the value-based one. Organized around the question Nadia eventually learned to ask herself: am I doing this because I love myself, or because I’m afraid not to?
- “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”. Jim Rohn
- “Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional, and mental states.”. Carol Welch, movement therapist
- “Exercise is the most transformative thing you can do for your brain today.”. Wendy Suzuki, PhD, neuroscientist, NYU, author of Healthy Brain, Happy Life
- “To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”. Buddha (widely attributed)
- “The body is not an apology.”. Sonya Renee Taylor, poet and activist, The Body Is Not an Apology
- “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”. Audre Lorde, poet and activist, A Burst of Light
- “Your body hears everything your mind says. Stay kind.”. Naomi Judd (widely attributed)
- “Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”. Abraham Lincoln (widely attributed; exact sourcing disputed)
- “Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.”. Christopher Germer, PhD, clinical psychologist, Harvard Medical School
- “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”. Oscar Wilde
- “Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.”. Deborah Day, psychologist and author
- “Health is not about the weight you lose, but about the life you gain.”. Widely attributed in modern wellness literature
On What You’re Building
The most durable form of motivation. The kind that can survive a year without training, a bad diagnosis, a season of grief. Tends to be identity-based rather than outcome-based. An outcome-based motivation says, “I’m doing this to lose twenty pounds.” An identity-based motivation says, “I’m doing this because I’m someone who moves her body.” The difference matters when you hit a hard patch: outcome-based motivation requires the outcome to remain visible and achievable to function. Identity-based motivation is more elastic. It can accommodate “I’m going to park at the gym and sit in my car for nine minutes” as still, technically, a version of who you’re being.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, describes this with precision: every action you take is a vote for the identity you want to embody. For Greta, the goal isn’t to complete the sprint triathlon she’d deferred. The goal is to remain, in some form, someone who goes to the gym. Even if that means sitting in the parking lot with the engine running, then getting out. That still counts. That is still a vote.
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to win the majority.”
JAMES CLEAR, behavioral scientist and author of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
The uplifting quotes collection on this site touches on this from a slightly different angle. When outcomes feel too far away to organize around, identity is a more stable scaffolding. These twelve quotes are oriented toward what you’re building, not what you’re achieving.
- “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”. Aristotle (via Will Durant’s interpretation in The Story of Philosophy)
- “Character is the sum of a thousand small daily choices.”. Attributed broadly to modern character ethics literature
- “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”. Theodore Roosevelt
- “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”. Coco Chanel
- “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”. Carl Jung (widely paraphrased)
- “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”. Erma Bombeck
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”. Nelson Mandela
- “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”. C.S. Lewis
- “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible.’”. Attributed to Audrey Hepburn; sourcing widely disputed but the phrase is genuinely galvanizing regardless
- “If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality.”. Dr. Roopleen, author and ophthalmic surgeon
- “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”. Eleanor Roosevelt
- “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”. Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
Both/And: “Just Do It” Is Sometimes Right. And Sometimes It Isn’t
“Just do it” is genuinely good advice. I want to say that clearly, because this article isn’t a case against action. Lewinsohn’s behavioral activation research confirms it: sometimes moving comes first and motivation follows. Sometimes the thought “I don’t feel like going” is a story, not a fact, and the most useful thing you can do is notice it and go anyway.
And: “just do it” is not advice designed for grief, trauma, or chronic overwhelm. It wasn’t written for Greta in the parking lot. It wasn’t written for the person recovering from burnout so severe that their nervous system treats every demand as a threat. For those people, “just do it” doesn’t fail because they’re weak. It fails because it’s the wrong tool for what they’re carrying.
Both/And means holding both of these truths without collapsing them. Knowing the difference between needing a push and needing care is its own form of wisdom. And it’s not a wisdom motivational culture cultivates, because the distinction doesn’t sell as cleanly as a swoosh logo. If you’re working on this discernment, the therapy work at this practice is organized around exactly that. The Fixing the Foundations™ course is also designed for people who want structured support with this kind of pattern.
The Systemic Lens: The Billion-Dollar Gap Between Who You Are and Who You’re Told to Be
Motivational culture is a billion-dollar industry, and the size of it tells you something: it profits from the gap between who you are and who you’re told you should be. Every sunrise-over-a-mountain caption is, at some structural level, predicated on the assumption that you currently don’t have it. That’s not an accident. It’s a business model. And it tends to be targeted at women who hold themselves to high standards and have internalized the message that if things aren’t working, the answer is more effort.
Audre Lorde wrote, in the context of her own cancer diagnosis: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation.” The structural logic applies broadly: a culture that profits from your sense of inadequacy won’t tell you that you might already be doing enough, or that rest isn’t failure. The resources at the Strong & Stable newsletter are built on this premise: not more pressure, but more clarity about what’s actually happening and what it calls for.
What this collection offers is motivation without shame. A different product entirely. Some hustle-culture quotes are genuinely useful: “Well done is better than well said” is solid advice. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started” is clinically accurate. But the frame they’re usually delivered in. You’re behind, you’re not enough yet, push harder. Is worth naming as a frame rather than a fact. And if you’re building toward a more sustainable relationship with motivation and self-regard, connecting with the practice is a good next step.
On Doing It Anyway
After all of that. After the clinical nuance and the systemic critique. There is still the unglamorous, quiet, repeated choice. The one Greta made when she turned off the engine. Not motivated, not healed, not finished with grief. Just: turning off the engine. Getting the bag. Going in.
Aisha, 50, a pediatric surgeon who’d navigated a late-career diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis that changed her relationship with her hands and, by extension, with the central identity of her adult life, described getting back to swimming this way: “The first day back, I got in the pool and I cried the whole first length. Then I swam the second length without crying. Then the third. I didn’t feel motivated at any point. I felt sad. But I was also swimming. Both things.” That’s the real version. Not triumphant, not cinematic. Wet, sad, and in the pool. The quotes for keeping going and quotes for staying positive in hard times collections are companions worth bookmarking alongside this one.
These twelve quotes are for doing it anyway. Not for the finish line, but for the second length when you’re still crying.
- “You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.”. Steve Jobs (widely attributed)
- “Fall seven times, stand up eight.”. Japanese proverb
- “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”. Confucius
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”. Winston Churchill
- “The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.”. Amelia Earhart
- “Keep going. Your hardest times often lead to the greatest moments of your life.”. Roy T. Bennett, author of The Light in the Heart
- “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The only way out is through.”. Robert Frost, widely cited; from "A Servant to Servants"
- “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”. Maya Angelou
- “Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
- “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”. Maya Angelou
Greta went into the gym that Sunday. She did not finish her planned workout. She got on the treadmill, walked at a low incline for twenty-two minutes, and left. She didn’t press play on the playlist. The Starbucks was still closed. She sat in her car for a few minutes after, quieter than when she’d arrived, and drove home.
That was not a comeback story. It was a first step. Lewinsohn’s behavioral activation in action. Not a feeling, but a behavior, chosen in the direction of who she is even when grief made everything heavy. The feeling follows. It doesn’t always follow fast. But the body often leads the mind. And sometimes turning off the engine and going in is, given what you’re carrying, a remarkably courageous thing to do. If you want support that goes deeper than quotes, individual therapy and executive coaching are both available; the Connect page is where that conversation starts.
Q: What’s the difference between low motivation and clinical depression?
A: Low motivation is a normal human experience that can result from grief, fatigue, stress, life disruption, or simply being in a hard season. It tends to be situational and to respond to behavioral intervention. Meaning that when you take action, the motivational feeling often follows. Clinical depression is a diagnosed condition characterized by persistent low mood, loss of interest in activities that used to be pleasurable, disruptions to sleep, appetite, and concentration, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness that doesn’t lift with typical situational improvements. The key clinical distinction is duration, pervasiveness, and functional impairment: if low motivation is disrupting multiple areas of your life, has persisted for two weeks or more, and is accompanied by the other symptoms above, talking with a mental health professional is the right next step, not looking for a better motivational quote.
Q: Why do motivational quotes work temporarily but not sustainably?
A: Because motivational quotes are external to the behavioral and identity systems that actually sustain action over time. A quote can shift your emotional state in a moment. Provide a hit of inspiration, reframe a problem, give you the jolt to get started. But it doesn’t change the underlying relationship between your sense of self and the behavior in question. Sustainable motivation tends to come from identity (I’m someone who does this), values alignment (this connects to what I care about most), or intrinsic reward (this genuinely feels good or meaningful to me). Quotes can point toward those things, but they can’t install them. If you find yourself needing a new motivational input every few days just to maintain basic function, that’s a signal worth paying attention to. It may indicate that the behavioral foundation beneath the motivation needs structural work rather than more inspiration.
Q: Is there a way to build motivation that doesn’t feel like forcing yourself?
A: Yes, and it’s grounded in the research on behavioral activation and Self-Determination Theory. The most effective approach is to start with the smallest possible version of the behavior you’re trying to build. Not the full workout, not the complete project, but the first five minutes or the first sentence or, in Greta’s case, just getting out of the car. Completing a small, achievable action generates a mood shift that makes the next action feel slightly more accessible. Over time, this creates a positive feedback loop. The other key shift is moving from external to internal motivation: instead of “I have to do this,” experimenting with “I’m someone who does this” or “doing this connects to something I actually value.” That shift doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s the direction of durable motivation rather than forced effort.
Q: What do I do when I know what I should do but can’t make myself do it?
A: First, it’s worth checking whether this is a motivation problem or a regulation problem. If you know what to do and have done it before, but are currently unable to access the will to do it. Especially if that’s accompanied by fatigue, grief, significant stress, or overwhelm. The issue may not be motivation. It may be that your nervous system is in a protective state that makes anything demanding feel unsafe. In those cases, the answer isn’t to push harder. It’s to attend to what’s underneath the paralysis. Therapy, rest, connection, and reducing the load elsewhere in your life are often more useful than another motivational quote. If this is a persistent pattern across multiple areas, talking with a therapist about what’s driving it tends to be more effective than any behavioral hack.
Q: Can a therapist or coach help with chronic low motivation?
A: Yes, and the distinction between therapy and coaching matters here. If chronic low motivation is accompanied by depression, anxiety, grief, trauma history, or other psychological factors, individual therapy is the appropriate setting. It can address both the underlying conditions and the behavioral patterns. If the motivation challenges are more about direction, identity, purpose, or performance in the context of a basically well-functioning life, executive coaching with a trauma-informed lens can be highly effective at clarifying what you’re working toward and building the internal structures that support consistent action. Many people find that some combination of both is useful at different stages of their lives. The key is finding support that’s actually calibrated to what you’re working with rather than applying generic pressure to do more.
WAYS TO WORK WITH ANNIE
Individual Therapy
Trauma-informed therapy for driven women healing relational trauma. Licensed in 11 jurisdictions.
Executive Coaching
Trauma-informed coaching for ambitious women navigating leadership and burnout.
Fixing the Foundations
Annie’s signature course for relational trauma recovery. Work at your own pace.
Strong & Stable
The Sunday conversation you wished you’d had years earlier. 20,000+ subscribers.
Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
Helping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist (LMFT #95719) and trauma-informed executive coach with over 15,000 clinical hours. She works with driven, ambitious women. Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs among them. Her focus is repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT #95719)
15,000+ direct clinical hours
California · Connecticut · Washington DC · Florida · Maine · Maryland · New Hampshire · New Jersey · Texas · Virginia · Washington
Creator of House of Life™ and Fixing the Foundations™
The Everything Years (W.W. Norton)
Founder & former CEO, Evergreen Counseling
Regular contributor to Psychology Today. Expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information.
