How to Motivate Yourself
Motivation is fickle.
Some days, you wake up with a roaring fire burning within you. This fire ignites you, pushing forward towards your goal, disregarding any and all distractions, providing unparalleled confidence in your ability to succeed.
Other days, you’ll feel crippled. You have zero motivation, no drive, an overwhelming amount of self-doubt and self confidence in your abilities.
It totally sucks….
In a way, motivation is like the seasons.
Let me explain:
Throughout the year, you’re bound to go through various highs and lows.
Just as the temperature goes down in the winter and up in the summer, your own motivation has it’s on set of peaks and valleys.
The majority difference between the two seasons is you can reasonably predict the weather and when they’re going to change.
However, it’s a different story with motivation. And you know what? It totally sucks. Unfortunately, it’s part of life, going through these “seasons” of motivation.
I struggle with motivation all the time as well.
As the Director of Fitness at Flow Fitness in Seattle, an online business owner, and sought after strength and nutrition coach, everyone thinks I NEVER struggle with motivation.
They are wrong; there are days when I don’t want to get out of bed, there are days I don’t want to answer e-mails. After coaching people for hours on end, the last thing I want to do is my own workouts. Hell, more often than not, I’d rather order delivery than take the time to prepare dinner myself.
Surprised?
Well you shouldn’t be because I’m just as human as you and no one - literally NO ONE - is motivated 100% of the time.
Here’s some tips, tricks, and “hacks” I’ve learned over the years to regain your motivation:
Crafting your own Motivational Story
Our human brains crave consistency and an easy way to stay on track is identifying and acknowledging a personal value as really, truly important, you’ll want to honor that value.
Working out because “you kinda know you should” isn’t enough to get you motivated. However, working out as an expression to your commitment to your family or self may do the trick.
In short, we want to create our story as to why we want to work out. This may be a little difficult to find that deeper meaning, but here’s a little trick you can do to create your story.
How to Craft your own Fitness Motivational Story
“ As a _______, I want to ______, so that I can ________”
Here’s some examples,
“As a working parent, I want to find a quick and easy nutritional solution so that I can help my whole family eat better without a lot of disruptions to our routine.”
“As a fitness professional, I want to undergo my own transformation so that I can use my education and expertise to help others achieve their goals.”
We all hold different values and personal standards for how we want to show up in the world. This is one reason why having a clear understanding of our values, priorities, motivations, goals and perspective is important. Everyone is slightly different and their reasons for working out is different. By linking that personal value to your fitness activity, you’ll get more oomph that can inspire you to get off the couch.
Schedule Your Fitness When It’s Not Likely to be Interpreted
There’s the reason why people workout first thing in the morning. Adopting a morning workout routine may be the necessary choice to create consistency, especially if you know your work life is widely unpredictable.
You can and should balance this against your natural rhythms. Some people just aren’t morning people (i.e. my girlfriend), therefore this is setting her up for failure for morning workouts. However, if you find your midday or evening workouts get cancelled more than 20% of the time due to curveballs of life, it’s worth considering adding a morning routine.
Pro-Tip - Weekend workouts are another great strategy for the 9-5er who often winds up a 9-9er.
Prepare “If-Then” strategies for life’s curveballs
To piggyback from the previous tip, you probably already have a good idea about what’s going to get in your way towards achieving your fitness goals.
While there will always be one-off challenges you genuinely couldn’t have planned for, most of our challenges are predictable and happen over and over again. Take a moment to identify any repeating patterns that prevent you from staying on track, then design a solution.
For example:
If my morning meetings run late into my lunch and I cannot have my salad, THEN I will eat my emergency protein bar I always keep on hand.
Incidentally, this is a research backed approach. The real magic is simply creating a contingency plan in advance. Once again, we want to minimize making decisions on the fly so you know how to respond when life inevitably throws you a curveball.
Make your Goals SMALLER
If you’re like me, then you have dreams, goals, and aspirations in your life. You have a lot of items on your to-do list - both small and large.
However, we often overestimate what we can do and our abilities to consistently execute our goals. When it comes to achieving our goals, the goal isn’t perfection, rather than consistency. It’s better to commit to something small to start building a streak of movement. Even tiny steps towards your goals are steps in the right direction.
So, what can you do?
In these situations, set small action based goals, such as walk 30-45 minutes per day, do your main lift and leave, cook one healthy meal, focus on having protein with each meal.
Again, it doesn’t have to be huge as you still want to strive for progress, not perfection. For more info, check out this blog.
Reduce the “Activation Energy”
Reducing the activation energy” is a fancy term that basically means doing whatever you can to remove any obstacles (however small) to “start” your fitness activity. For me, it’s having my gym clothes laid out the night before, pre-setting my coffee to brew upon waking up. This allows me to actually get out of bed and get ready for the day.
Make a List of All the Benefits of Working Out
Here’s a simple activity to motivate yourself - Take out a sheet of paper and make a list of every single benefit of achieving your fitness goal. Make sure to include EVERYTHING you can think of. Some reasons will be some high-minded (self-actualization), some will be practical (I want to fit into those jeans again!) Whatever your reason is, write it down.
Choose Activities you enjoy Doing
It’s a lot easier to keep up with your fitness routine when you’re actually enjoying what you’re doing. You’ll be surprised how many individuals actually dread doing their workout. If you find yourself within that camp, you’ll need to re-adjust. While I’m all for doing what’s optimal for your goals, somethings you’re better off doing a less than optimal activity because you genuinely think it's fun and you enjoy it. Consistency will always trump perfection.
Eat Healthy foods you actually like
Want to make it easier to pick a healthy option for dinner? Build a menu of go-to meals you’re genuinely excited about eating. There’s no reason to just eat chicken, broccoli and rice over and over and over. Instead, look to substitute the chicken for another protein source (ground turkey, fish, lean beef, etc.). The same principles apply for the broccoli and rice. This will allow you to stay on track and actually enjoy your food rather than consistently deprive yourself.
Don’t know where to start? You can begin by looking at the Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Foods, or knowing the 5 Principles of Good Nutrition.
Creating Barriers for Trigger Foods
It’s much harder to eat cookies for dinner if you have to leave your home and go to the store to buy them. Implementing this strategy will look different based on your living situations. If you are living by yourself, it’s a lot easier to keep those temptations away. However, if you’re living with loved ones who want to keep chips handy you can still create barriers. Simply store them in an out of sight, semi-annoying place (think back of the cabinet, or top shelf).
Plan your Day the Night Before
As the saying goes, those who fail to plan, are planning to fail. We all know life has a way of “surprising” us. Instead of being reactive and making decisions on the fly, make a plan for
When you’ll work out
What you’re going to eat
When you’re going to eat
This isn’t to say you can’t riff or respond to your day, yet without some template for your day, your life will feel needlessly chaotic. You’ll be adding a whole other set of decisions to make on top of your normal demands of your day. Make a plan before bed as to how you’ll make time for your fitness the following day!
Accountability
Human beings are social creatures. If there’s one thing I've learned from a decade of coaching people, it’s that most people struggle to create change on their own.
One of the biggest barriers to fitness success is often poor time management or simply not having someone to guide and support you even if you're demotivated.
Making a commitment to another human being will provide some useful tension to your personal integrity to do the things you said you were going to do when you said you’re going to do it.
At the end of the day, we all know there’s no such thing as a magic pill. Achieving success always requires some work. Some discipline will be necessary. On the other hand, there’s no glory in needlessly overtaxing your willpower and white knuckling it without any support.
If you’re struggling to get going, consider hiring a coach. Making a social commitment can be a powerful way to create some useful pressure to push through your own interia.