Flow State Business

Motivation isn't the key to a better 2026. This is.

• Ruby Lee

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If your internal world feels ready but your environment hasn’t caught up, you need to listen to this episode.


We're talking about the kind of motivation that doesn’t rely on hype, big launches or green lights from the universe.


I’m sharing how I built habits that now make showing up inevitable, what I do when the evidence feels thin, and why intrinsic motivation changes everything.


This is about who you’re becoming, how your environment responds, and the gap in between.


👉 The Daily Sales Mastermind is open - and this is the final week of January pricing. If you’re ready to build steady sales and steady energy, come check it out.


👉 DM me on Instagram - I’d love to know what this episode brought up for you.

 Hello. All right. I am recording this towards the end of January, 2026. We're heading towards the second half of Jan. Wow. So I wanted to timestamp that because I feel this topic is gonna be really pertinent for those of you who are listening to this within this time, vicinity of the new year. This could be the new year in 2028 for all I know, but we're talking about 2026 right now.

I feel like this topic is an evergreen topic that you'll feel at different seasons of what might seem like a start line. And clearly, January can feel like this pressurized start line. Start line with the business, start line with your content, start line with something new and fresh. So I wanna start this episode somewhere really real because a lot of you, a lot of my clients ask me all the time, how do I stay motivated?

How do I show up so consistently? Like, you know, just being on the podcast every single week. How do I know what to talk about? How do I know what's going to land? How do I know what's going to do well on social media? And I'll be honest, like I think a lot of the time, I don't rely too much on motivation anymore.

It's very ingrained in terms of, well, this is what I do on a Sunday. It's my one job on a Sunday to record the podcast. It's, you know, and Monday rolls around and like, it's my one job on a Monday to send an email to my list to post an Instagram post carousel and to sell something. You know, like, but I'm not thinking about it much.

Like I need to get motivated in order to do those things because guys like I am. Definitely not always motivated to show up for the business and for my content. Like I'm, I am so grateful that I have this life, that I have this company, that I have my amazing clients. But I have to say it's not, if I had it purely run on this level of I'm so motivated and I'm hyped up and I'm excited for everything, I really, really believe that I would not be as, you know.

Visible as I have been, you know, in the last seven years of running this business. But I am incredibly consistent and I wanna talk about what that is made up of. Because this is, this is it like, let's get going. Like I feel January. Yeah, we, we can ease in. It's fine. But we're talking to February and the year ahead.

It's the year of the horse. Let's power forward come February. I know a lot of us are gonna feel like ants in our pants. Like we wanna be able to charge forward in some way that feels good for us and that's in our flow state. We definitely don't wanna be wondering, oh, when is the motivation going to hit?

And like I said earlier, when something becomes a habit, it stops being this big emotional wrestle. It's not something that you negotiate with yourself every single time. Like, oh, I really hope that when I wake up today, I'm gonna be so motivated to do something in the business. Instead, it becomes something that you do as part of your habit of being a leader.

It's part of your habit of being your, you know, like the captain of your own ship. As corny as that sounds, you don't wake up and go, oh, I hope the ship sails today. It's just like you. You gotta do the stuff to have the ship's sail. So, you know, like I said earlier, I'm recording this on a Sunday morning and probably 90% of my podcast episodes have always been recorded on a Sunday morning.

I like this day, it's quiet. I like that the world feels a little slower on Sundays. This is pretty much the only thing I have to do on this day, and then I will go and enjoy the rest of my entire Sunday. I'll get my nails done today. I'm gonna go for a massage. I'm gonna watch the Australian Open. Yes, it opens today one of my favorite players, uh, cab is playing later, so I'm gonna watch him play.

And that's it. You know, like that's besides all the good stuff that I'm going to also enjoy, I have this like subconscious pull to like record the podcast roofs and then we can get on with the rest of the day. So it's kind of like that, but I'm not here going, oh, I'll record it once I feel pumped up. I started this podcast, I had to look it up, but I started it on the 14th of May, 2018.

I had quit my job in March of that same year, so March, 2018. So two months later I started it and since then, this is wild. This is blowing my mind. I have recorded 442 episodes. Bloody hell, guys. What? Like that is wild. I saw this on listen notes. By the way, if you go to listen notes.com and you type in anybody's podcast, you can see.

How many episodes they've recorded. You can see what their podcast is about. You can also see their global ranking, um, in percentage form. So it's a very cool website. Uh, and you'll be able to, you know, basically just get the receipts on like, is is this a nice, is this a big podcast? Is do people listen to this kind of thing?

So anyway, go and have a look there. And I think it's just so interesting to see that kind of data. 'cause podcasts is sort of hard to wade through. Anyway, I haven't stopped. And I can tell you out of those 442 episodes, I wasn't motivated for every single one of them. And it's, you know, it's because I assumed the identity of being an online thought leader who has a podcast.

Do you have an identity that you are assuming yourself into? Like, some of my clients are, I am an educator. Who is also a TikTok and 90% of their energy is, you know, really funneled towards four pieces of content Monday to Thursday, doing the short form. And that's what they do. And, and they don't feel extremely excited or motivated to get in front of camera.

It's just their identity. So you have to decide who you wanna be and how you wanna show up and commit to that. You know, and I'll give you a really, really hot tip. The reason why I don't need a whole heap of motivation to show up every single week in my business, it's yes, because I've assumed who I am now, but I've also baked it into my environment.

So this is my rhythm, this is my identity, this is my setup, and that is all inclusive of setting yourself up for success. So for example, I walk in to my office on a Sunday, maybe it's a little bit messy because by the time it's the end of the week on Thursday or Friday, I just kind of leave everything as is.

On a Sunday, I come in, I do a big spray and wipe, like wipe everything down off my desk. I just do a bit of a dust, put my incense on, smells beautiful. I have my mic set up. The air con is on because it is still so muggy here in Queensland, and it just sets up this environment. Oh, I've always got my purple light on which triggers flow state in my brain because I associate that color to being at work and being in deep flow.

So I am not sitting here. With a script or with talking points. I'm not overanalyzing the data of what needs to land and what podcast did really well and what I need to do better and how many guests I need to have on. I'm not trying to have this perfectly polished podcast either. I'm not trying to predict whether it's gonna go viral or perform well as an YouTube short.

I genuinely could not care less about this stuff. What I care about is that I'm about to jump on this microphone. I'm gonna hit record and that this is gonna find the people who. Find it really helpful at this time to hear this conversation and that's something in me really feels powerful and it feels very clear.

And I must say like, I'm not even sure what I'm gonna call this episode at this point. All I knew was I had this like idea of, I need to speak to you guys about motivation, but in like your best friend energy of it's not. Something that you can tick off or put on a to-do list. Just you and I were chatting about intrinsic motivation and we're talking about how to feel a little bit more anchored into our year, and hopefully after listening to this, it puts you into some sort of your own flow state, and this is what this whole episode is gonna be about.

So I, that's, that's it. I don't want you to overthink it in 2026 because if you are relying on overthinking to stir on motivation, I can tell you right here and right now, your flow is gonna literally die in the ass. Like it is not gonna go forward. And if you are relying on motivation the way most people think about it, this work and this energy becomes unbearable, you are gonna be wrestling with yourself all year to try and get yourself pumped up.

So I wanna talk a level deeper, actually about. What's underneath this, and I've been sitting with something for a while now and in this sort of end of day way where like I'm not spiraling. I haven't spiraled out of my business for ages. I used to do it a lot, especially in the real, real crazy peak times of COVID.

Online business was the biggest boom energy that you could have ever imagined. Like I was hosting groups of hundreds and it was amazing to have that. But you know, I would end the day absolutely spiraling and then it would, you know, literally just predict the rest of my year. And it was all of that. And somehow in that, I'd be like, I need to dig deep to find this level of like excitement for the business.

I want you to think about this as. You know what makes this so exciting is you are in the game. Like you're not just planning on the sidelines, but you are actually in it with everybody else. I'm not gonna go in with all of my analogies with the arena and running the gaunt well, like I did last episode, but let's just assume that this is the same thing, right?

So in the same sort of energy of like you are a contestant. You know, you are at the Olympics and you've got your number and you are registered. You know, it's just you're checking in and you're doing the work and there's this kind of specific energy which comes with that of like, if I'm around others that are doing this, I need to, yeah, I need to kind of be there with them.

I've opted to be here in this room and I'm gonna be here with them. I'm not gonna literally sit back and overanalyze everything anymore, but I also know a lot of you. Coming from a place where perhaps like, uh, last year or whatever months before you didn't really get as much evidence as you would've liked to, to have been successful.

And I wanna say that you didn't half try, you didn't hide through it. You were showing up and you were doing things and like, for example. You showed up and you were consistent even through the moments where you didn't feel motivated, you didn't disappear, you, you invested your time, you refined your processes.

You might have even, you know, really done okay with holding the energy of a launch. You've backed yourself more than ever before, but still you personal evidence feels thin, not necessarily. Non-existent, but just thin enough to mess with you and to mess with your energy and to mess with your belief system.

And I wanna talk specifically to those of you who are there and you know, your motivation has taken a hit because the numbers are not showing up. Whether it's financial, whether it's social media performance, whether it's how many people show up to your free zoom call, the evidence just feels thin. You know, I had a friend say to me the, a couple of weeks ago, she was saying like.

She recently felt like motivation wise, she was excited for the year, right? Like, it's like I, I'm, I'm pumped and I've journaled and I've done my vision board and I'm excited, but she just felt like her environment hadn't caught up yet. So, you know, she was losing followers online. She wasn't making as many sales or none at all this year, and she didn't know how to get back into it.

Kind of like she felt like she was in this container that was keeping her enclosed. So there was almost like a lid on her motivation be, and because of that, she wasn't able to fully back the way that she wanted to be. And then. Slipped back into this vortex of not feeling good enough and slipped back into this vortex of this story around like, what's even the point?

This is so difficult. Consistency feels harder than it should, even though it's like the word for the year or for this particular friend of mine. And do you know what? Like the moment she was sharing this with me, I thought, that's it. That's it. That's why I feel so heavy. And this is what came to me. When your internal world starts moving a lot faster than your external one, so your dreams, your values, your vision, your motivation internally moves faster.

Then everything on the outside that you would like to see as evidence, you start to feel constricted and constrained. It's like you've grown out of a pair of shoes that no longer fit you. And it's like you're ready, but you are waiting for something outside of you to give you permission to go all in again.

Is anyone totally understanding what I'm talking about here? I was there. Many moons ago feeling like this is, and, and honestly, like I say this as like a key example where I wanted to hit this like seven figure mark in my business. I wanted to make a million dollars. I wanted to have that experience. I wanted to prove that I could do this because I knew that I was meant to.

Be in this line of work, serve thousands of people and be handsomely compensated for what I do. And so I put like all of this energy behind dreams and visioning and journaling and all this spiritual goodness, which was pulling me forward into this new quantum reality. And then you, it's like you kind of snap out of it and it's like, guys, um, so I'm working off this like shitty laptop that's, the screen's not really showing up properly.

Um, yeah, I've probably got no clients on the books right now. This was me and I remember this sense of, okay, like, what's the problem here? You know, I'm so capable, I'm so intelligent, I'm so deeply in invested, but why do I feel stuck now? That was back in 2020. I hit my first Millionaire 2021. Maybe I'm a year off.

Maybe it was the year before. Anyway. And I remember sitting down and looking at the p and l and my husband was like, we've crossed over the million, and it was the most. Nothing energy. I can't even explain it. It was like, oh, okay. Now back to the group that I'm helping or the mastermind that I'm launching, it was like actually quite hilarious because my environment had caught up to something that I already knew was going to happen.

And that's not to say I didn't, you know, celebrate that moment, but it was like, duh, of course that's gonna show up because the environment eventually caught up with what was going on internally. Now, especially for those of you who come from environments where your effort leads to a very visible reward.

You know, like you're doing the reps and you're putting the effort into selling and you're the top salesperson for your company and you get rewarded in, you know, some sort of bonus, or you get, you're at the top of the leaderboard and that looks fantastic. Your competence and your abilities is mirrored back quickly.

For those of you that come from that environment, and that's where I came from. Recruitment as an industry was my background. I worked in high pressure environments and heavily KPId environments. I loved seeing my name at the top of the commission board. Let me tell you, I loved that. I loved having so much pressure and my targets being hit and it just feeling like so exciting for that like that is what I really respond to.

So. You know, momentum motivation was reinforced that way. So I'd come outta that environment, into this space where I became an online career coach. That's how I started as a career coach for a lot of my corporates who were wanting to move into leadership, high level leadership roles. So that was really interesting because I soon found out that the online business world.

Doesn't work like that. It doesn't work. Where you get that mirror back really quickly with visible rewards and a whole heap of reinforcement, confirmation, testimonials. No one wanted to gimme a testimonial because they didn't obviously want people in their networks to know that they got help with their resumes.

'cause like, you know, how embarrassing or they didn't want others to know that they were going for other jobs. So I didn't get that there. The money was so meh because it took hours and hours to get to know somebody and to write their resumes and their cover letters. So that wasn't reinforced there either.

People weren't commenting on my social media because obviously they didn't want people to know that they were going for jobs or needing resume or career help. So all of it was behind the scenes and I had to. Find another way to connect to motivation. Find another way to connect to this forward moving momentum.

And they, this was like early on in the journey guys. This was 20 18, 20 19. I had to learn fast and work out why it just always felt so uncomfortable. And that gap is uncomfortable because your identity shifts before your environment. Does everyone I know who has built something meaningful? Has lived through this stretch of an uncomfortable season, and then you go through a harvest.

Now, if you are still in the uncomfortable season and you feel like roofs, like I have been walking through this desert for seven years and nothing's happened, and it just feels really frustrating, I have something for you, so keep listening. I want you to know, like, uh, think about every single entrepreneur that you have studied, read their books, watched their, you know, masterclass and things like that.

Every single one of them, they'll all tell you the same thing, that there's no rhyme or reason to getting through the gap. Being uncomfortable and feeling like no one's seeing your work. Like you'll know this by now. If you've been studying business for some time, it's not the amount of posts you make.

It's not how many hours you grind. It's not how many customers or clients you have. It's not how long you've been in business. One of the things that I remember I was told really early on in my corporate days was like, you are not going to get seen or recognized or get the money that you want until you have gray hairs on your head.

You know, like that sort of mentality. There's no rhyme or reason and it's also not luck, and it's also not that you've missed the moment, it's just like it really does come down to what you can do. As much as you can do that, and I'll tell you what that looks like. 'cause I think a lot of you misunderstand what that is and you just hustle real hard.

But it also comes down to this is the more spiritual side, your life path, your timing. Your purpose. You have to trust in that. You have to see things from a point of view of, this is part of this timeline and this journey that I'm on, and the sooner you see that as a wonderful, beautiful thing, the more fulfilled you will become, rather than trying to wrestle the hell out of it.

There are times, even now, don't get me wrong, it's not like, oh, I've figured everything out. I changed my entire business model last year. You guys, this is mental. Like why did I do that? But I wanted to do that because I knew that I would have a better life by changing my model to a low ticket model. I knew that I would have more time.

I knew that I would have more freedom. So within that, I've been in the uncomfortable and, but I've also been blessed with the knowing of like, this is exactly where I'm meant to be. This, these struggles are what's teaching me lessons. That's literally going, I'm gonna look back at this time and be so proud of myself for standing in that uncomfortable gap.

So if you are in this overlap period where your old identity and your future identity are coexisting longer, then your nervous system would like them to coexist. This is where maybe your motivation starts to feel unreliable, because motivation for most people is conditional. Remember what we said? It's tied to feedback, it's tied to proof, it's tied to outcomes.

And when those outcomes don't come fast enough, your motivation drains pretty quickly, right? It drains really how fast. So this is how I typically reframe things. For me. I wanna share this. Please pick it up if it works. If not, I totally get it. We'll workshop something else for you because you know what I wanna say is.

As I said it all through the episode, motivation for me is no longer hype or willpower. I don't need a hype gal. I don't need cheerleaders. I don't need, you know, like a ton of people saying, well done, well done. Like keep going. What I am mostly focused on, especially this year as we start to master our work around daily sales is focusing on my habit formation.

And the chemistry work. My internal brain chemistry, which is things like neural pathway work, reprogramming my beliefs, working with how I speak to myself, breaking the habit of being myself. Thank you, Jo Dispenza and identity work, who I'm choosing to be. I'm choosing to be an online. Thought leader. I'm the founder of a digital education company that's made millions and millions of dollars online and still growing rapidly, and I'm a podcaster and a YouTuber, right?

So if you wake up every day and you look to your environment to decide how you feel, what's happening is firstly, you are immediately playing a very difficult game. You've chosen hard option every single day. I want you to really think about that. Where are you wiring that pattern deeper and deeper. If you wake up every single day and you look at your environment and you decide, I get to feel inconsistency with my habits that form successful outcomes, rather than I need a successful outcome to form good habits, I promise you, you'll be on a better path.

Listen to that part again if you need to, and what will happen? Is you will start to notice that who you become doesn't require proof or even more effort, or even more work, or even more fatigue to feel worthy of what you are all meant to receive. And it doesn't even come down to the fact that you need to feel motivated to show up in your business.

It's a habit that you show up in your business. You have a bigger. Willpower. You have a bigger vision, you have a bigger, it's almost like you've got more things to almost focus on than just getting hyped up and going back to the example, right, of my friend who felt like she was in this container and what she described just honestly made so much sense where her head felt ready.

Her vision felt ready, but her body, her environment, her data, everything was still waiting for safety signals to go green light. This is the time, and I will also kind of put in there whilst, you know, I love me astrology, you know I love me, human design. I mean like you have ultimate willpower. You do not need, I can't even tell you how many people have said to me, I'm not gonna start anything until the year of the horse begins.

I'm gonna spend the rest of these next three weeks, like shedding out everything I don't need. Holy shit, you guys. I'm saying this at 11:11 AM like right now. Just looked at the time. I want you to know, listen up. This is, here we go. Like your angel message. You can start now. You do not need to wait for a magical time on the calendar to say, green light go.

And this is what I said to my friend also. I said to her, you know what, like your internal identity has moved. You've claimed her, but you're still asking your external environment for permission to meet it there. And that's the habit that honestly is keeping that sense of feeling like a lid is on. It needs breaking.

The lid. Needs breaking, okay, so I'm gonna say that again. Your internal identity has already moved, but you're still asking for, for permission from your external environment to meet you there. That's gonna be very frustrating, very frustrating. You do not need confirmation before you give yourself permission to fully step into who you are.

Intrinsic motivation. Have a look. If you're a psychology major, if you've studied this, you will know. Intrinsic motivation doesn't come from results, it comes from identity. So just like this podcast, I don't wake up asking myself like, am I feeling it? Am I feeling like, call her daddy today? I need, I need to be Oh, motivated.

Yeah. You know, like I, I need to have like. The whole podcast set and the best microphone. And the best lighting, I actually thought that's what I needed to feel motivated, and do you know what I did? It was the complete opposite. Turned my camera off. I do not want a video podcast that is not me. I am sitting here literally still in my short, short PJs and no makeup on, still with my skincare on for the night before, and I've had one coffee wishing for a second very shortly.

I'm just like, this is what my motivation feels like, where I'm not doing what the industry is expecting of me to do, and that's the shift. Because even though, you know, I didn't wake up this morning asking myself, oh, do I feel like recording? It's just, I'm recording today. You know, I had a coffee with my hubby on the balcony.

We were looking at the ocean together. He is like, what? What are you doing today, babe? And I said, oh, well, apart from just hanging with my bestie, which is him, a k, a, him, but um, I'm gonna get my nails done, win a massage, and uh, yeah, I've got my podcast like it was just part of the day. So I built an environment and.

A habit, a rhythm that makes recording inevitable. Tomorrow I know that I'm gonna be posting and sharing stuff to my email is, and that's inevitable. That's the shift. So I'm gonna leave you with a very practical piece of advice, and I want you to hear how gentle this actually is. I'm probably not necessarily described as gentle.

I'm very much like, come on. But tomorrow. Before you check anything. Okay? Anything, anything. Do not check anything 'cause it's hard. Like tomorrow, whatever that day is for you. Tomorrow is Monday for me. This is hard for me to do also, but we're doing it. I want you to pause for a minute. Not to visualize your dream life.

That's a vibe, but we'll do that later in the bath. It's also not. I don't want you to like psych yourself up and you know, tell yourself like, today's gonna be the best day ever. I actually just want you to notice the state in which you are waking up. Then ask yourself, how does the version of me who already knows that what I'm deciding to be and who I'm deciding to be, and what I'm deciding to have in my life?

What does that version of me do to move this path forward? That's it. So I know like if I'm really asking myself that in a very, very grounded way, it's easy to go to the checklist and it's easy to add things to the to-do list. Oh, I should post this. Really. Does the version of you really want you to do those things or does the version of you, is it calling you up to change some external habits?

Is it asking you to look at your environments that cause success? Is it asking you to look at what the real results are? What's really burning in your sacral as like, this is my personal power and this is how I'm choosing a shop. So why the hell am I still doing this? I should just outsource it to my VA for 40 bucks an hour.

Right? Like take an action from that state and you, I promise you will feel so anchored in that work. The more you do that, the less you need hype. The more it will become a habit, the more it will become a part of your everyday state. But you first need to teach your nervous system something new. That action does not require proof.

That movement does not require reassurance or a pat on the back. Instead every time, what you're doing there is staying really calm to like, this is who I'd be. This is my identity. You are laying a new neural pathway ahead, so you're breaking that cycle, that version of you. Who's waiting, who's waiting, who's waiting?

Who needs motivation? Who needs all of these accolades to happen? And then you become the version of you who feels motivated from within because there is a greater purpose work attached to that. And ironically, 'cause this is how the law of attraction works. The evidence arrives faster. It's like, damn it.

Why does everything need to feel so back to front sometimes? But it's true. The more I have lent into this in the morning, I check in on my state and then ask myself, you know, what do I need to, to move this pathway forward to grow my digital education business? Are the actions I'm taking today matching that?

Yes or no? Does it feel good? And you can do it all throughout the day. Like lately, I have been such a gym rat. I just, I've wanted to go to the gym every single day, loving it, obsessed. That is what this version of me wants to do. And then I come back and I get on with everything. And it's not a tick list, it's just my identity.

It's who I am. So if this year feels like it might still be a tough one. Or you're telling yourself this is gonna be, oh, here we go again. Like last year was a bit of a dead end, you know? Like, I don't know where my next client is gonna come from. For a lot of people this year is where intrinsic motivation finally replaces conditional motivation, and I'm so excited for you.

If that's you, if that's what you are calling in, and if you wanna be around those types of people who are not just like there to cheer, lead, and hi, but just in the identity of doing the things that move their business forward. I would love to invite you into the Daily Sales Mastermind. I'll leave the link below because we are about to end the January sale price.

So this is where I really want you to take a close look at what is there, and I truly believe every single entrepreneur. Deserves a sale every day, but that you can learn how to make sales every day, not through pushing harder, not through trying to do more, in order to feel more motivated, but how you can just do it in a very steady, calm way that money shows up for you.

Clients that you love working with are literally like, I need your help, and you adore working with them because you feel so in your flow state. So in your purpose work. You've wondered for so long, like why has business felt so hard? I'm gonna teach you ease, flow, effortlessness daily, Sally and you to be with a group of people who are in this vibe every single day.

It is such an incredible space to be in. Go and check out the Daily Sales Mastermind in the link below, and I'm really excited for you. Okay, let's pop that lid, right? We don't need to wait for a specific date. I'm excited and I hope you have the most incredibly intrinsically motivated day ahead. All right, I'll catch you in the next episode or go and binge the past ones and yeah, I'll see you next time.

Bye. My loves.