The other day a client called me and opened with, “I’m so unmotivated right now.”

I told her to put her shoes on and call me back from outside. She thought I was kidding. I wasn’t.

So she did it. Walked out the door and talked me through what she was seeing. Cherry blossoms, people everywhere, music somewhere in the background… The city doing what it does this time of year. Loud and alive in every direction. Five minutes later, her voice had completely changed.

She didn’t need more discipline. She needed a different state.

What was actually happening was simple: she had spring fever and was trying to override it. Forcing herself to sit inside, staring at her screen, pushing against a state she wasn’t in. Somewhere along the way, she had decided that’s what discipline looks like. Sit down. Power through. Ignore the part of you that wants something else. But that restlessness isn’t a distraction; it’s information. It’s your body telling you something has shifted, more energy, more desire for movement and connection, and instead of using that, she was trying to suppress it. Then calling herself unmotivated when it didn’t work.

That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a mismatch between the energy available and the way she was trying to use it.

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent his career studying flow, the state where you’re fully engaged, energized, and performing at your best. The central finding is that flow doesn’t come from forcing yourself into the wrong conditions. It comes from aligning your energy, your environment, and your attention. When those things match, everything gets easier. Conversations feel natural. Decisions feel clearer. Momentum builds without you having to manufacture it.

Serious athletes understand this intuitively. They don’t train against their body all the time. They train with it. There are days for pushing and days for resetting, and the ones performing at the highest level know how to read those signals and adjust. They don’t wake up flat and double down just to prove something. They shift the workout. Because the goal isn’t to demonstrate discipline. The goal is to perform.

That’s the reframe worth sitting with right now. Spring is a change in conditions. More movement, more social energy, more openness. People are outside. They’re talking. They’re saying yes to things they put off all winter. That’s not a distraction from your business. It’s the environment your business runs in.

So instead of asking why you can’t focus at your desk, ask where your energy is actually trying to take you. Go for the walk, but make it a business development walk. Call someone you genuinely want to talk to. Stop into a building you’ve been curious about. Sit outside and send three thoughtful messages instead of twenty forced ones. Let yourself feel good first, then move from there. When you feel good, you show up differently. More present, more curious, more yourself. And people respond to that.

Directing your energy is discipline. Denying it isn’t.

Coaching Corner

For the next week, experiment with this.

When you feel resistance, pause and ask what your energy is actually asking for:

Build your day around one activity that gets you in motion, a walk, a coffee, a stop-in. Replace one forced task with one real connection. Pay attention to when you feel most like yourself and do more of that before you start your business development. Notice whether you’re trying to create energy or tap into the energy that’s already there.

The season is doing some of the work for you. Let it.