Everything sounds like a great idea when you are thinking about it and planning it out. The problem, as they say, is in the execution. Sunday afternoon you are superbly confident of your plan to get up at 5 AM Monday morning and do your prescribed workout. However, when that alarm goes off, suddenly your mind finds every excuse in the book to hit the snooze button and sleep “just 10 more minutes….” How do you remedy this? What do you do in the early hours of the morning to drive the demons of laziness out of your head and get up to get that workout done? Well, there really is just one way. Force yourself. Drag yourself. Make yourself get up and do it. I know, that’s not what you wanted to hear. You expected something magical, something logical, something practical, something that wouldn’t require you to exert any effort to make it happen. Me too. I used to think the same way. Why isn’t there some sort of crazy mental trick I can use to motivate myself? Why does it have to be so hard to force myself to get up and get the workout done? There actually is a trick, in a way. It’s called the law of accommodation. Whatever you keep doing over and over again becomes easier. If I’m lazy and unmotivated, then as I repeat that action of hitting the snooze alarm, it becomes easier for me. If I drag my lazy ass out of bed and make it to my basement gym just one day, it becomes slightly easier the next. As I keep pushing, prodding, coaxing, cajoling myself to get up at 5 AM and workout, it becomes habitual. It becomes easy. My body and brain naturally “accommodate” me. Don’t just do it. Get it Done.
How do you get and stay motivated? Discuss!
3 Comments
Tony N
February 22, 2010The biggest hurdle for me is that plans keep changing.
Take tonight for example, I was stuck at work late, I got home and dinner was already made. The original plan was to get home, workout a bit and then eat, followed by a relaxing time on the couch. Because of circumstances beyond my control I could not follow the original plan. Isn’t it all too easy to bail on the exercise now? A voice says “oh well, it just wasn’t meant to be”, “guess I don’t have to feel guilty though, after all if it wasn’t for my job…..”.
Instead of abandoning the plan, I change the plan. OK, well maybe I can do a different shorter routine, it doesn’t have to rough, and I need to let the food digest a while. That doesn’t stop me doing something though. Even if I just do some very light movements for 20mins I win. If I do nothing, then I lose. Keep losing and I become a ‘loser’.
Not in the eyes of others, we aren’t talking schoolyard names here. I mean internally I am a loser, because I don’t even admit to myself that in order to achieve something worthwhile I have to work for it. Well, thats how I motivate myself, I change the plan so that I get a small victory, in fact perhaps that is a greater victory if it was harder to achieve.
David C. Furukawa
February 27, 2010Passing along my own personal motivation goals during this “year of the tiger”is something of a dream come true.Teaching my kid’s class on Tuesdays as well as my adult class on Thursdays keeps me thinking about training, constantly.Sometimes I’ll mention to my Buyu what they’ll need to bring to class…sometimes I’ll surprise them.Teaching Budo Taijutsu is a great way to stay in shape.If you can’t do it…how can you teach your students?
I love training outdoors and I must admit I’m a terrible spectator.I need to be right in the middle of the action.So NINPO has so many opportunites to do the things I like to do.On the weekends I’m kayaking,Scuba diving,tree-climbing(arbornautics),shooting,blade throwing,archery and many other activities outside the realm of our indoor training.Taijutsu is the foundation,but there is alot more training out there.Find it and do it.Take care!
Dave
Jon
February 27, 2010Excellent stuff, Dave – way to lead from the front!
Leave A Response