Un-Motivated?
January is the time of year when we are inspired to buy memberships at health clubs and fill journals with resolutions full of promise. Holiday sluggishness is replaced with renewed energy and resolve. Suddenly clients call me eager to begin a workout program. Sometimes we feel motivated and sometimes we do not. Yet, needing to be motivated before making time to work out gets you nowhere. So, how do you start or continue an exercise program if you lack motivation?
Action First – Attitude Second
It is the doing of the thing that creates the desire to do it again. My client, Angie, is a perfect example. Her goal was to exercise as part of her desire to lose weight, but week after week she would come to our sessions feeling sheepish and tell me she had not followed through regularly on her daily walking program. She was not making progress and was feeling bad about herself. After months of trying to motivate her by changing her schedule, introducing different activities she enjoyed and incorporating self-determined rewards, I tried something else. It was clear that Angie knew what she wanted to do. She just could not get herself to move. So, I made a radical decision to stop trying to motivate my client.
I told her she could skip her walks if she committed to doing one thing. She was to put her shoes on every morning after breakfast. She was to step outside onto her back porch and lock the back door. At that point, she could unlock the door, go back inside and read the paper until it was time to get ready for work. If she wanted to, however, she could continue off the porch and walk for as long, or as short a distance as she chose. Can you guess what happened? Angie had been sitting at the kitchen table waiting to become motivated to move. Once we put the action first – putting on shoes and walking out the door – the attitude followed. Angie began walking every morning. She began to lose weight, gain muscles mass, and feel better about herself.
Expect Bad Days
Exercise can be fun, but it can also be boring, tedious, and time-consuming. Does this sound familiar? Do you love your job every day or are there days that feel like they will never end? Are there days you would rather lie on the couch and watch reruns of Friends on Netflix? And what do you do on those days? You go to work. You expect to have bad days. You expect boredom occasionally. But the long-term consequences of taking too many days off from work mean you will soon be without a job or a paycheck. What is the long term-effects of no exercise?
Children Cheat – Adults Do not Honor Their Commitments
If you skip a workout or do not workout at all, who are you cheating? My clients who decided to exercise are the ones who succeed. Clients who schedule their workouts on the calendar and then do them as regularly as brushing their teeth are the ones who will have better health, a stronger body and a different life in weeks, months, or years. Clients with excuses week after week are the ones who will be making those same excuses next year and will not reach their goals.
I saw this turnaround with a client named Carla. One day she was telling me how much she hated making time to work out; there were so many things she would rather do, or that she needed to do. I told her that she could, of course, hate exercising. No one says you must like it. It’s preferable to find something you like to do, but I told Carla that she still needed to exercise either way.
She stared at me. “I do not have to like it? But people who work out all the time love working out! I will never be like them.”
“Carla”, I said, “I am a trainer and there many days I do not want to work out. That is true for everyone. The difference between you and those people who appear to love exercise is that they have made a decision to work out, even on the days they don’t want to, and you’ve decided that not wanting to exercise is a legitimate reason to quit.”
For Carla, this changed her way of thinking. She has been committed to her weekly workout for the last six years. She still does not love it, but then again, she does not hate it quite as much. Either way, she made the decision to do it.
If you are feeling motivated to exercise, that is great! If you are not, that is okay, too. But either way, decide to start today. It is a decision you will not regret.
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