Motivation

The biggest problem with a lack of motivation is that it has the tendency to develop into a self-perpetuating cycle: the more demotivated you become the further this feeling demotivates you, until you find yourself so overcome with apathy that it becomes harder than ever to pull yourself out of your rut. The downward spiral of demotivation can attack any area of life, but the one I have struggled with the most in the past is the lack of motivation to take control of my diet and exercise routine. I know that this is a problem faced by many other people too, so I thought I’d share what I have learned about motivation and how to dig yourself out of even the deepest of ruts.

It can be tempting to put off taking action because you don’t feel ready to tackle your situation, but in my experience you won’t ever feel 100% ready to do something that is going to take you out of your comfort zone. You need to stop making excuses and kidding yourself that these are legitimate reasons for your delay in getting started. Sooner or later you’re going to have to take the plunge and muster up the courage to throw yourself into the deep-end head first, and you’ll be glad you did. Procrastination is just avoidance sugar-coated by the pretence that there is a legitimate reason for not getting started.

If you are fortunate enough to be in good health, the only person who has control over the shape you are in is yourself. YOU have the power to fulfil your potential, to lose weight and to achieve optimum fitness, and the best part is that it doesn’t have to cost you anything. Once you can truly grasp that you are the person who holds all the power to take control of your situation, you can start to make changes. There aren’t many areas of our lives that we have complete control over, but our diet and exercise routine is one of them – so take charge of it! The word “empowerment” is so overused these days that it is has started to become stigmatised, but I really do believe that taking full control of your health can be empowering. Make the decision today to start making changes for the better.

In order to stay motivated and harness your desire to keep on bettering yourself it is absolutely vital that you set yourself clear goals and keep track of your progress. The best analogy I can come up with is when I spend days on end working on an assignment and try my absolute hardest to produce my best possible work, I need to see results in order to ensure that I’ll feel motivated to continue with my studies. When I get a good mark it makes all the hard work worth it, but if my marks were never returned to me I’d feel as though all my hard work and focus had just disappeared off into the ether and I’d have nothing to show for it. This is why it is so important that you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, and check in with yourself regularly to monitor your advancement towards your goals. How you choose to do this is up to you, and if you’re a member of a gym the staff there should be able to help you develop a plan that will allow you to track your progression.

It may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but it actually only occurred to me quite recently that the reason I was having difficulty sticking to my diet and fitness goals is that I wasn’t paying enough attention to how well they were actually working. It’s tempting to avoid weighing yourself, or testing how quickly you can complete a circuit compared to a week or a month ago, in case the results aren’t what you were hoping for. The fact is that sometimes they won’t be, but instead of getting disheartened just make sure you use this as a tool to motivate yourself further and do better next time. All that will happen if you avoid checking up on your progress is that you’ll lose track of what you’ve achieved and eventually stop trying.

Go on, start today. A month from now you’ll wish you had.