I’ve been at the fitness game for over a decade now, and for the most part; my job is to help motivate you to take positive action.
The funny thing is that as a fitness professional, I struggle from time to time with my weight, my mental health fucks right off, where to is unbeknown to me half the time and this affects my positive nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle habits.
Knowing what to do and not doing it doing it when I’m struggling is a tough ne for me, especially when I’m supposed to be the one leading by example.
However, as my therapist tells me, I’m just a man, I have my flaws and these flaws help me understand just how easy it is to make a boat load of justification to sack the gym off, go home and have a sulk on the couch and watch TV until I drift off hoping I’ll feel better the next day.
If, like myself, you have bouts when motivation is high then suddenly, the little sod is nowhere to be seen then I would like you to be kind to yourself and understand this is normal.
It is impossible to be 100% motivated to exercise, 100% of the time, even with the mildly annoying posts from the motivation police telling us what we already know on the social media.
So, what to do when your motivation is on its arse? Here’s what I’ve been taught what I’ve learned so far on how I deal with it.
I hope it helps.
The Motivation Myth
When I’m not feeling motivated, I sit in peace with my thoughts and acknowledge I’m not motivated and allow myself to accept that its ok.
This is the process I go through.
- I then think on controlling the controllable and what I can do to take positive action.
- To recognise that positive action towards my goal without feeling motivated, will always lead to progress.
- Progress will foster inspiration
- Inspiration then fires up motivation.
By practicing this process, I am learning to bypass feeling de-motivated and as my positive actions (behaviours) become habit, I don’t need to be motivated to take positive action; Always with my end goal always in mind, I am developing a habit, a discipline to take positive action and progress, Which in this context is to be lean, physically healthy, mentally flexible and live longer.
I’m still learning to separate the feeling of de-motivation and taking and positive action, and I’m learning to look at the evidence I have in my past to support that I can do this.
The evidence I have collected so far is this.
I am never motivated to pay tax, never motivated to go to the dentist and never motivated to pick up my dogs’ shit’s when we’re out on a walk, but I do it. I do it because of I have the end goal in my mind. I don’t want to the VAT man knocking at the door, I don’t want my teeth to look like a burned down fence and I don’t want dog shit all over the park where kids play.
So, by practicing this same process you tell me why you can’t exercise or eat well when you’re feeling de-motivated, because I bet my life on it you’ve taken action on something you’re not motivated to do in your past.
To help you collect your own evidence. My suggestion is that you sit in peace with a pen and paper and write a list of all the stuff you have taken action with that you didn’t want to. By the end you will come to realise that you have taken positive action when you’ve not had the motivation to do so.
I bet getting out of your warm and cosy bed on a freezing morning to go to work is one of them. It’s definitely one on my list.
The lesson I am learning is that Positive action can foster motivation.
So, when motivation decides to stay in bed, accept it, you can’t control that, be mindful, assess what you have planned and if need be take action on something smaller that you know you’re capable of if the workout you have planned seems too much for you that day.
If this means cutting the length of your workout, decreasing the intensity of your workout, going to your favourite workout, or swerving the gym altogether and getting outside for a walk, run, cycle or chasing cheese down a hill (this is a real thing and funny as fuck) then so be it.
Aussie Man Reviews Chasing Cheese
So, I’m asking you to be kind to yourself please, understand and accept that feeling de-motivated is NOT a defect and can be bypassed with practice by following the process above. It’s 100% helping me.
A secret hiding in plain sight and one that I’ve learned, is that in the grand scheme of reaching my fitness goals, motivation isn’t a major player. Positive action is, and taking positive action is always under my control, felling de-motivated is not, it is out of my control and I can do feck all about anything that is out of my control.
Remember this.
Positive Action = Inspiration = Motivation = positive Action = Inspiration = Motivation and so it continues.
Motivation can be fostered; it very rarely shows up on his/hers or its gender neutral own.
That’s me for today. I appreciate you taking the time to read some of my nonsense.
Thanks again.
Talk Soon.
Show up, work hard and go get what you want from this life
Yours in health
Rick
