What Motivates You? Part II
(courtesy of http://sdisbury.com/wordpress/)
by Jason Colenzo
To workout and to dedicate time to bettering yourself can often be frustrating. There are some days you just don’t feel like being there. It could be you had a long day at work, a gathering where you drank 27 shots of Jack Daniels and assumed you were “good bro”, or just apathy towards the idea.
To motivate yourself from within, or intrinsically, is a powerful tool for you to garner for success. This is for the day’s where you may still be sore and tired but you say to yourself “I have to do this, there’s no other choice”
Notice the words HAVE TO. That’s distinctly important because it gives working out a priority in your life. If you approach lifting and working out like you do calculus or NPR radio, you probably won’t be all there. You may drift through workouts, doing the basics, skipping workouts frequently. Since fitness is not a big priority to you, it gets treated as a second rate activity; you do it but the effort just isn’t there.
If you want to take on a new lifestyle, you HAVE to do it. There are no maybes, what ifs, not sures, about changes to your lifestyle and eating habits. Your body is a machine that needs proper attention and care. You need to do this for YOURSELF.
No going around from machine to machine to impress Jumpin Jody the cute desk girl. Chances are if you didn’t say hi the first 6 years you were a member, its not going to help you much now.
No relying on friends to motivate you to work out. You should WANT to go to the gym and do the lifts, the running, the stretching, to better YOU. Your friends should not be the catalyst that drives you to go. If that’s the case, chances are you’re a shitty work out partner who complains if you have ab work planned for the workout. You’ll drag down the entire group and no one wants that.
The only exception to this rule being spotters. If you are handling big weights, it is a safe precaution to have spotters there to ensure safely completing lifts. If your friends bail, for the most part you should be able to find someone to spot you. Don’t let friends dictate your workouts.
You should want to go to the gym with a sense of purpose. You are there today because its another step toward shaping yourself into a better person physically, as well as emotionally. You’re not always going to have the best workout, but being there and putting your best effort in is a lot more rewarding then sitting one out because you don’t feel like it.
Ultimately, if you want to be successful, you cannot let outside factors influence the way you go about fitness. You should be motivated by the need to change yourself. The gains will come as long as you put the effort towards achieving them. Fitness works well in that it rewards the hardest working people. If you run harder, you’ll become faster. If you lift more, you will become stronger. If you stretch, you will become more flexible.
Time in the gym is NOT wasted effort, it is a series of conscious decisions based on your physical demands. We all should strive to reach the carrot hanging off the end of the string.
