Resolve can keep you going. It can't tell you whether you're going the wrong way.
Motivational speakers often say that success begins with a decision. Get fed up with where you are, decide to change, build an intense desire for something better, and summon the resolve to see it through.
Sales trainer Cody Askins put it this way in a recent training for his inside sales team: Disgust → Decision → Desire → Resolve (see video below). Most people, he argues, get disgusted with their lives at some point. Some make a decision. Fewer sustain the desire. And without resolve, the point where the matter is settled and you will keep going until it is done, the effort fades.
There is real wisdom in this. Many goals stall not because people lack intelligence, but because the early enthusiasm fades and sustained action becomes difficult. Askins is right to say so plainly.
But wanting success, committing to success, and having a reliable process for achieving it are three different things. Resolve can get you started and keep you going. It cannot tell you whether you are going in the right direction or using a method that works. The challenge is not simply to become more determined. It is to become more effective.
To be fair, a motivational training doesn't have to be a complete theory of achievement. The problem arises only when its message is treated as one.
1. Disgust Can Start Change, but It Can't Steer It
Askins begins with dissatisfaction, and that matches real experience. Someone gets tired of being broke, out of shape, or stuck in a job going nowhere. Eventually the discomfort of staying put outweighs the discomfort of changing. Disgust makes the cost of doing nothing visible.
But disgust has two limits.
First, it isn't the only source of motivation. People also pursue goals out of curiosity, ambition, love for others, or the satisfaction of mastering something hard. You don't have to hate where you are to want something better.
Second, disgust doesn't point anywhere, and it can fade as soon as the pain eases. Psychologists distinguish between avoidance goals (getting away from something bad) and approach goals (moving toward something good). Research on personal goals has found that people who pursue more avoidance goals tend to report lower well-being and feel less competent than those who frame their goals as approach goals.1 Think of how this plays out: the person who starts exercising because they dislike the mirror may quit once they feel a little better. The person who comes to value strength and health has reasons that don't evaporate.
Notice that Askins' own best illustration is an approach goal. He describes walking onstage before 4,000 people and wanting it to last longer than an hour. That isn't disgust. That's a picture of a future worth pursuing.
So ask two questions, not one:
- What am I no longer willing to tolerate? This tells you that change is needed.
- What worthwhile future am I trying to build? This tells you where to go.
Disgust opens the door. A meaningful objective tells you which way to walk.
2. Intentions Don't Execute Themselves
Askins is blunt that most decisions are "just lip service." He's right, but it's worth asking why sincere decisions so often fail.
The answer is that deciding to do something and organizing your life to do it are different tasks. A person decides to learn a language but never sets a study time. Another intends to start a business but spends months researching without ever testing whether anyone will pay. A third promises to fix their finances but never looks at the numbers.
The intention was real. What was missing was a mechanism for turning it into behavior.
Psychologists call one such mechanism an implementation intention: an if-then plan that specifies when, where, and how you will act. Instead of "I'll make more calls," it's "When I sit down at 9:00, I dial for ninety minutes before I open email." A large review of studies found that forming plans like these had a medium-to-large effect on whether people actually reached their goals.2
A workable goal answers a few plain questions:
- What exactly am I trying to accomplish?
- Which actions are most likely to produce that result?
- When, where, and how often will I do them?
- What skills and resources do I need?
- How will I know whether I'm making progress?
"I want to be financially successful" is an ambition. "I'll spend five hours a week building a marketable skill, contact prospects every business day, and review my numbers every Friday" is a plan you can actually carry out and evaluate.
3. Resolve Is Not a Strategy
The strongest part of Askins' message is his insistence that desire fades. Motivation rises and falls. People get tired, hit setbacks, and discover that anything worthwhile takes longer than they expected. Someone who only works when inspired will not get far. Resolve, the commitment to continue when the excitement is gone, matters.
Askins defines resolve with a memorable play on words: re-solve, meaning "it is solved. I've already worked it out." It's a memorable line. But notice what it quietly assumes: that the problem has, in fact, been worked out. Often it hasn't. Resolve settles whether you will keep going. It doesn't settle how.
Picture two sales agents, equally determined. Each makes 100 dials a day for a month, and neither misses a day. The first reads the same opening script on every call. The second tries two different openings, tracks which one books more appointments, and switches to the winner by week two. At the end of the month, both have the same activity numbers and the same resolve. Only one has a way to learn. The first has simply gotten better at repeating something that doesn't work.
That leads to the most useful distinction in this whole discussion:
Be committed to the objective. Hold the method loosely.
A person can stay committed to financial independence while changing careers, learning new skills, or dropping a business model that no longer makes sense. A student can stay committed to mastering a subject while abandoning a study technique that isn't working. Revising a strategy is not weakness. Often it's the clearest sign of good judgment.
This takes some intellectual humility: distinguishing between what you want to be true and what the evidence says. If customers keep rejecting your product, your belief in it was useful for getting started, but it is not a substitute for their verdict. Confidence helps you begin. Humility helps you correct course. You need both.
There's one more caution. Motivational stories feature people for whom resolve paid off: the athlete who willed his way to a championship, the speaker who went from broke to arenas. We rarely hear from the equally determined people whose plan, market, or timing didn't cooperate. That's survivorship bias, and it makes determination look more decisive than it is. Resolve matters. It isn't sufficient.
4. Systems Carry You When Motivation Doesn't
The most practical upgrade to the motivational model is to build systems: repeatable routines, schedules, measurements, and surroundings that make the right action easier to take.
Compare someone who wants to exercise with someone who has a routine. The first has to decide all over again every day. The second already has workout times scheduled, equipment ready, exercises chosen, and a plan for the usual obstacles. The routine doesn't eliminate difficulty, but it removes most of the daily decisions.
The same logic works everywhere:
- Finances: automatic savings transfers, a weekly expense review, a monthly look at goals.
- Learning: scheduled practice, self-testing, and regular review of weak spots.
- Sales: daily activity targets, call and appointment tracking, conversion rates, and rehearsed answers to common objections.
Resolve still matters, because some days following the routine will take effort. But a good system means you're not relying on heroic willpower every morning. Instead of asking, "How do I make myself feel motivated?" ask, "How do I arrange things so the right action is the easy one?"
5. Measure Results, Not Just Effort
Motivational talk tends to blur effort and achievement. Hard work is usually necessary. It isn't always sufficient. You can study for hundreds of hours and retain little. You can work twelve-hour days and still not make payroll. You can be busy all week without touching what matters most.
That's why measurement matters, and why it helps to track two kinds of numbers:
| Measure | What it tells you | Sales example |
|---|---|---|
| Process (leading) | Are you doing the work? | Dials, contacts, appointments set |
| Outcome (lagging) | Is the work producing results? | Sales closed, retention, income |
If your process numbers are low, find out what's blocking consistent action. It may be effort, but it may also be an unrealistic schedule, missing resources, or an obstacle you haven't named. If your process numbers are strong but your outcomes stay weak over a reasonable stretch, working longer hours probably isn't the answer. Look at the method, the quality of execution, and the assumptions behind the plan.
Measurement also protects you from confusing the feeling of productivity with actual progress. Students are a classic example. Rereading notes feels productive, yet a major review of learning research rated rereading and highlighting as low-utility techniques because their benefits are limited or inconsistent, while practice testing and spaced-out study sessions earned high-utility ratings.3 An honest test that exposes your weak spots is worth more than a comfortable session that hides them.
6. A More Complete Model
Disgust, decision, desire, and resolve describe how motivation gets started and sustained. A fuller picture also explains how motivation becomes effective action. Here is one way to frame it:
- Direction
- Identify a worthwhile objective and know why it matters.
- Strategy
- Determine which actions, skills, and resources are most likely to produce the outcome.
- Structure
- Set schedules, routines, milestones, and accountability that support consistent action.
- Execution
- Keep doing the work when enthusiasm dips and obstacles appear. This is where resolve lives.
- Feedback
- Measure results and compare them honestly with what you expected.
- Adaptation
- Fix what isn't working, shore up weaknesses, and revise the objective when the evidence warrants it.
This is a cycle, not a ladder. Feedback may send you back to strategy. A change in circumstances may require new structure. Early success may justify expanding; repeated failure may mean rethinking the goal itself.
None of this is new. Business people will recognize the plan-do-check-act cycle from quality management. Research on people quitting smoking on their own helped develop a stages-of-change model that distinguishes not yet considering change, contemplating it, taking action, and maintaining it, with relapse a common part of the journey.4 Askins' sequence covers the front end of that journey well. Resolve is his answer to persistence, but it leaves the practical problems of maintenance largely unspecified.
7. A Christian Word on Resolve
Askins describes resolve this way: "It is done. It is finished." He is most likely using the phrase as everyday emphasis. But for Christians, those words carry a particular weight. "It is finished" (John 19:30) is Christ's declaration that His work was complete, a work accomplished on our behalf, not by our willpower.
That matters for how believers think about ambition. Scripture doesn't discourage hard work or planning. Quite the opposite. Jesus Himself pointed out that no sensible person starts building a tower without first sitting down to count the cost (Luke 14:28). Proverbs commends the diligent planner over the hasty one (Proverbs 21:5). But Scripture also holds our plans with an open hand: "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps" (Proverbs 16:9).
Christian resolve, then, looks less like "I have already willed it into being" and more like faithful stewardship. Do the work of your calling diligently, plan carefully, measure honestly, adapt humbly, and trust God with outcomes you don't control. That is a sturdier foundation than self-certainty, because it doesn't collapse when results disappoint.
Conclusion: Determined, Disciplined, Honest, Flexible
Disgust can spark change. Desire can supply energy. Resolve can keep you going when the energy fades. Cody Askins is right to stress the difference between briefly wanting change and committing to sustained action, and his challenge to stop paying lip service to goals is worth hearing.
But the most determined person doesn't automatically win, the longest hours don't guarantee the most progress, and refusing to change direction isn't always strength. Sometimes the right move is to persist. Sometimes it's to improve the method. Sometimes it's to admit the original plan was wrong and choose a better one.
Be determined about worthwhile goals. Be disciplined in doing the work. Be honest about the results. Be flexible about the methods. Motivation starts the journey. Resolve can keep you walking. Direction, strategy, feedback, and adaptation determine whether the path leads anywhere worth going.
Notes
- Andrew J. Elliot and Kennon M. Sheldon, "Avoidance Achievement Motivation: A Personal Goals Analysis," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 1 (1997): 171–185. ↩
- Peter M. Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, "Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes," Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2006): 69–119. doi:10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1 ↩
- John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham, "Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology," Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14, no. 1 (2013): 4–58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266 ↩
- James O. Prochaska and Carlo C. DiClemente, "Stages and Processes of Self-Change of Smoking: Toward an Integrative Model of Change," Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 51, no. 3 (1983): 390–395. PubMed 6863699 ↩
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