High limbic friction is required to initiate behaviors when feeling tired or anxious.

“Now, limbic friction is not a term that you're going to find in the formal neurobiological literature or even some of the psychological literature. It's, frankly, a term that I coined to encompass a number of different pieces of the psychology and neuroscience literature.”

“So, if you're feeling particularly tired and you don't want to get out of bed, and you don't want to go out and do your zone II cardio, then there's a high degree of limbic friction. [...] Whereas if you're very, very alert, there's less limbic friction because you're moving toward something that's action oriented.”

“So, using this Lally study as an example, some people would eat dinner, and then say, "Oh, that's right, I've been trying to develop the habit" "of taking a walk after dinner." "So, let's get up and go." Other people will feel like, "I just don't want to do it today." They're going to feel too much limbic friction and that limbic friction could arrive, again, from one of two sources. It could be because they are too tired to do it or it could be because they're too anxious and distracted in order to do it.”