Feeling lazy yet again?
Does this statement, sound familiar?! So many of us, use this one line quite often as an excuse to bail ourselves out. I do feel that when we say I’ll go tomorrow, we sincerely do mean that we will go to the gym the next day, and then we are again tired, we have had a long day, it’s winter, its going to be a pain to get all the layers off, change into gym clothes, I want to go with my friends for coffee etc. etc. At some point we all have been through this phase.
These thoughts take us a step back, and we almost immediately decide not to go. How do we beat this? What can we do to not let these thoughts take over and be a block between us and our weight loss? Our thoughts can get very dangerous for us. It can either get us to do things or completely take us away from your goal. At this point, it is imperative to understand what motivation is, and the two parts of it.
Motivation, which is divided into Extrinsic & Intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is when something external motivates us to do something. We would want to exercise to fit into our new clothes, we would want to look good, we would want to gain some appreciation from our friends or it could be to impress our partner/spouse or may be we want to attend a party & we want to look our best. It could be anything that motivates us externally to achieve our goal. Extrinsic motivation is also very helpful when we want to make our goals permanent. We just need a kick start to achieve it.
We need to remember that, this can be very temporary for some people. Once we do get that appreciation or fit into our best pair of jeans, we may not want to get back to exercising. We may feel very bored to do the same thing again & again. Especially when we have achieved what we wanted.
This is when, we get to, Intrinsic motivation. When we are motivated internally. Here we need no clothes, no external figures for whom we are doing anything. If we are losing weight, we are doing it because we want to do it. What can be interesting to watch is, when we begin by being motivated externally & that ultimately it becomes our internal motivation too. That’s an ideal situation! We all want to be there.
Let’s see what we can do to help ourselves to not say I’ll go tomorrow.
First, ask ourselves some questions. This is our foundation. Don’t skip this one. Why do we want to exercise? What is it that we want to achieve? Once we achieve it, how would we feel? After we have reached our goal, what will we do next? What time during the day would be convenient for us to exercise? What would be the duration for which we would want to exercise everyday.
These are questions that are very important for us to know, so that when we lapse, we are answerable to ourselves & no one else. Also, when we write it down, it gets clearer to us, and we have something to refer to all times.
Second, is consistency, we need to make sure till exercise becomes a habit and we cannot live without it, we need to follow our timings quite religiously. Consistency in our schedule will take us a long way.
Third, if our reason to go to the gym is to lose weight, then we have to know what to eat and what not to. Diet, plays an important role in helping us to achieve our goal faster. Seek professional help here, if you have to.
Fourth, Distractors. We will come across a bundle of distractors along the way. They can all meet us just when it is time to enter the gym. We need to fight them all. Distractors will take us away from achieving our goal. So now to be one step ahead of them, we will also along with all the questions that we have jotted down from our first step, we will write down all our distractors that we are likely to encounter along the way, and which will stop us from achieving our goal. For example:
- I feel lazy today
- I exercised for 2 hrs yesterday, I can skip it today
- I want to go home and sleep
- I am so tired
- I want to go out with my friends….
The list can go on, till we finish putting in all that can distract us. The reason we write all of them down is so that when they land right in our face, we smile at them and tell them, We know what ‘you’ are going to do, but we will not allow it. Walk right past them and enter your place of exercise. Once we do that, we pat on our back! Well done!
Fifth, goal achieved, once we are able to walk past, we know that our intrinsic motivation has come into play & now we do not have to worry about I’ll go tomorrow.
Try following these five steps & see if these help ‘you’ achieve what you want to. If you still find it difficult to follow these steps, feel free to chat with me , I will help you.