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Eliminating The Problem of Low Motivation

Eliminating The Problem of Low Motivation

As long as you keep thinking of training and exercise as “the thing I enjoy doing” you’ll keep running into the mentally barbed wire obstacles of low motivation and diminished willpower. Regardless of how many positive shivers you feel towards training today, there will be days when, much like scooping up strangers dog poop, it’s the last thing you feel like doing.

Instead of trying to break through those obstacles, it’s better to bypass them altogether. To do so, you’ll have to introduce a new way of thinking. You need to eliminate the word “enjoy” from training.

So instead of training being “the thing I enjoy doing”, it’ll become “the thing I do”.

As is with work, you can’t stop going to work (or working from home, as most of us do now) just because you don’t feel like it. Well, you can for a while. But it takes only so long before your employer, clients or your customers will get the shits with your purely hedonistic “here’s what I feel like doing today” pursuits.

Like with work, accept that there will be days when the thought of training and exercise feels like someone asking if there’s a possibility for them to insert a pineapple up your butt. But, regardless of how you feel about pineapples, the feeling becomes irrelevant.

Turn up, do the training, go for a walk, get your exercise in. And feel better once it’s done.

The Case for Vigorous Movement – For Those Not Motivated by Pure Vanity

The Case for Vigorous Movement – For Those Not Motivated by Pure Vanity

Swirl when you’re winning.

This is the monster article I mentioned a while back. I got inspired to write it after reading this 52 page research, Role of Inactivity in Chronic Diseases: Evolutionary Insight and Pathophysiological Mechanisms. A real page-turner. And heavily referenced in this article.

Here’s what to expect:

Part I is about the benefits of participating in frequent vigorous movement, beyond of the “to look good on Instagram”. Yes, for most people a part of training motivation is the vanity aspect. That’s cool. I am not above that. Honestly, it’s probably a bit weird if it’s not. Yet, if you are like me and motivated more than just owning a body you can rub in coconut oil, this is for you.

In the end of Part I I’ll cover how much of physical activity to aim for at minimum.

Part II dwells further into physical inactivity and how it relates to osteoporosis, cardiovascular health and mental health, among other nasty stuff. So if you want to know the specifics of why physical movement is the best thing ever, you’ll love Part II. In the same way you love Godfather Part II vs Part I. I mean, both are amazing. But in unique ways. …

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When You Feel Unmotivated

When You Feel Unmotivated

We all have times when we are on the verge of stopping because the goal just feels too enormous and intimidating. Maybe the goal looks like a small dot in the horizon. Maybe it feels like an unbearable mountain with vertical walls, jammed with barbed-wire and razor blade obstacles. And manned machine guns.

Most people stop before they get anywhere. I like to call them the start stoppers. They don’t stay on the same route long enough to see results from the work they put it. …

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The Hard Fact About Motivation

The Hard Fact About Motivation

The Hard Fact About Motivation

We are what we repeatedly do. – Aristotle

Motivation increases as we make promises to ourselves and keep them. The size of the promise doesn’t matter. By doing what you said you’d do you’ll empower yourself for future success. You’ll increase the awareness of self-control and licence yourself to accept more responsibility of your life.

When you hold on to your promise you will build integrity and become the person who does what you said you would do. As much as you want motivation to be something that you’ll get from somewhere else, it is already in you. Motivation is not a feeling. It’s an activity that you’ll do.

 

MOTIVATION = DISCIPLINE = MOTIVATION

This can be a bitter pill to knock back. It means that you are responsible for your own actions and therefore motivation. Start treating motivation as a discipline to follow through with the task that you’ve decided or promised to do.

No longer can you wake up in the morning and not do a task because you are not motivated to do so. You have to admit that you don’t have the discipline to do it this very morning.

You have to admit that you don’t have the discipline to do it.

I don’t feel like writing on every single morning. I struggle with the motivation to get started and would rather read a book or do something else that doesn’t require me to rub my creativity knuckle.

As of writing this, I am fighting the urge to take the dog out instead of writing. But I’ve made myself a promise to be a writer, and what do writers do? They show up and write, even when they don’t feel like it. And that’s why I am sitting here writing, while resisting the begging eyes of Bear the Dog.

Neither do I always feel like lifting weights. And for the last six weeks it has been something that I have “had to do” instead of something I’ve been looking forward to each day. But a long time ago I made a deal with myself that I will look after my health and lifting weights is a big part of it. It’s what I do. Whether I always feel like it or not.

And that’s why I will lift again later on today. Besides, I do always feel better after, so there’s that.

Once you let the daily fluctuations in your feelings to drive your behavior, you’ll forever be at the mercy of them

Sure, tasks are more enjoyable when I do enjoy them but I know that if I have the discipline to show up when I don’t feel like it, the tide will eventually turn. It’s happened before and it will happen again. During low “motivation” it’s crucial to stick with it.

Once you let the daily fluctuations in your feelings to drive your behavior, you’ll forever be at the mercy of them. You wave in and out of habits and routines of getting things done. You’ll follow “let’s see what I feel like doing” instead of “this is what I have to get done”. And that’s how you build consistency and get results over time. Not by waiting for the next wave of motivation to rise.

 

DISCOVERING DISCIPLINE

Where most of us of us take a misstep though is that we focus on wrong goals and activities that don’t align with our deeper values. The analogy that the productivity wizard Stephen R. Covey uses in The 7 Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is that you’ll end up climbing the wrong ladder.

It is challenging to climb a ladder that is not something that truly matters to you. So it’s harder to have the discipline to do what you set out to do. And even if you get to the top after all that struggle you don’t get the feeling of fulfillment because the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

And yes, I’ve tried to climb plenty of wrong ladders.

If you’ve been struggling with something lately and have found yourself spinning them wheels, there is a chance that you need to question why you do (or don’t do) the things you do. Because once you have a goal that you truly want to achieve, you will have, not the motivation, but the discipline to do it.

Ok, I am off to take Bear The Dog for a walk.

66 Unconventional Ways for Exceptional Fat Loss, Fitness and Health

66 Unconventional Ways for Exceptional Fat Loss, Fitness and Health

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66 unconventional ways for exceptional fat loss, fitness and health

 

Search the Internet for how to lose fat and you are bound to get about million hits with everything from how to time your macros to which way to hold a fork when eating an egg.

Some of the points in this post are more philosophical and some are more practical. I first wrote hundred points but came to conclusion that the last thing we need is another post on the best protein sources and whether boiled potato has better nutritional value than a grilled sweet potato.

My reason for this post is to help you to build your own principles and rules to follow. From now on I want you to be indifferent and ignore the latest and craziest fitness trends that come and go. Learn to sit on your principles and watch the fools do the running.  Find what’s right for you. Let’s begin.

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