You know you need to exercise, you know it’s good for you, you even know that once you go out and do your workout you would feel so much better. However, there’re days when your motivation goes out of the window, days when you don’t really feel like exercising at all, days when the only thing you want to do is to sit on the sofa and do nothing. You may wonder where did all your motivation go? And what to do to get yourself together and be back on track again?
There’s a saying that discipline is to do something that has to be done whether you like it or not. So let me share with you 5 tricks that will keep you motivated to regular exercises starting right now:
1. Find Your WHY
And I really mean Your Why and the reason Why it’s important to You. Your Why may be different from your friend’s why, the reasons that will keep you going may be different from the reasons that may keep her going. You need to do this for yourself, not for your partner, not for your mum, not for your friend. Your friend’s motivation may be to look awesome in bikini walking on the beach but you really are not that bothered about it. Your motivation may be to be able to play with your kids without losing your breath or there’s a big day coming up with friends reunion, people you haven’t seen for years and you want to show up with that wow factor hearing comments like “…wow, look at her, she looks amazing…” Or maybe you got a warning from your doctor that if you don’t lose weight and start improving your health, you may be in serious troubles. You need to find Your Why. Deep inside you know the answer. Do you know that the bigger the why the easier the how. So, what’s important to you? What is that Big Why that will keep you motivated when you don’t feel like it?
2. Get your skin in the game
Invest in yourself and I mean money. Pay for gym membership, for personal trainer, for diet plan from nutritionist, work with a health coach, buy new training clothes, new shoes, some accessories, invest in yourself, in your health, in improving your life. Investment in yourself is the best investment you can ever do, it’ll pay off massively. Once you spend money, you have skin in the game, you don’t want to waste it, so you’ll stick to the plan. It may be challenging to start with but really, it’ll keep you going. Once a new habit is created you’ll be hooked.
3. Have a deadline in mind
When you’re just starting out or you’re back to exercising after a break, have deadline in mind, a date that you need to lose weight by, train for, get ready for. Let’s say you want to look great in that bikini, when is your holiday booked for? If you want to do that 5k or 10k, sign up for a race, pick up a date and sign up, once you do, you’ll need to stick to your running plan to get ready. And share with others that you’ve signed up, they’ll keep you accountable, they want to see your progress and pictures from the race day or from that amazing holidays. Having a date, a deadline will really help you move forward.
4. Find a training buddy
Have a friend, neighbour or your partner to train with. Once you commit to training together it’ll be more difficult to quit. So if you wake up one morning really not feeling like exercising at all, knowing that your friend is waiting for you will help you get out of bed. If you agreed that you’ll go to fitness classes together, you’ll feel ashamed to cancel the last minute. If you scheduled a run in the evening, you’ll put your snickers on and go. It’s so much fun to train with a buddy. You’ll keep each other accountable, motivate each other and pushing each other. And celebrating together. I can tell you, together you’ll smash your goals much faster enjoying the process much more.
5. Score yourself each evening
Come up with a system to score yourself each evening on a scale 1-10. Give yourself points for exercising, healthy eating, drinking water, having ME time. You can have a chart for each day or writing the numbers in your calendar. Stick it on your fridge or somewhere, where you can see it several times a day. Do that each evening. Once you know you need to score yourself at the end of the day, you’ll be reluctant to quit training or eat rubbish. You want your score to look good, don’t you? When you score yourself, you can track your progress. Oftentimes you’re not aware of bad choices you’re making daily and putting the numbers on what you’re actually doing, will give you a great overview of that. What gets measured, gets improved and that’s the way to succeed.
So, start thinking of yourself as “I can do it”. Find Your Why, get your skin in the game, have a deadline in mind, find a training buddy and score yourself each evening. And have some fun in the process. You’ll be setting yourself up for a lifetime of better health, more energy for everything else in your life and more happiness and fulfilment too.
And tell me how you’re doing, I want to know.
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