How many times have you made a New Year Resolution only to give up weeks later? And then you’ll blame lack of time… lack of motivation… willpower or so on. Yet there is no one alive who lacks motivation, time or willpower.
Take for example
millions of people who every year declare that this time they are going to lose some weight. Just weeks later they start beating themselves up for lacking motivation and willpower… for not being good enough and anything else they feel bad about themselves.
Yet being overweight is not due to lack of motivation… but too much motivation. The reason anyone is overweight (apart from a few extremely rare cases) is because they have too much motivation… for cheese, crisps, cakes, chocolate or whatever their particular vice is.
People can’t stick to an exercise routine… because they are more motivated to do anything other than exercise.
Motivation is never problem. The problem is what fuels your motivation.
In general, we gravitate towards things that we think will bring us most pleasure and least pain. It may vary depending on our personalities. For example, Introverts will tend to be more concerned with avoiding pain, whereas Extroverts will be most interested in gaining pleasure. Some people will delay gratification for a bigger pay-off… while others want it now. But overall we want best deal we think we can get for cards we’ve been dealt.
Since one of most universal complaints is lacking motivation for exercise, let’s trace steps a three-month exerciser goes through to create their motivation and its downfall.
Most people, who start and stop exercising, begin with a very specific fear. So while they will generally say they just want to shape up, it goes far beyond that. Here’s real truth.
They have probably been thinking about exercising for months. But they were never motivated enough to get started. Certain times of year, such as January are natural times to make changes.
