Exercise Motivation that Works from the Mind

I cannot stress enough how important it is to maintain good physical fitness and health. Exercise is as important as getting enough sleep or drinking water, but many choose not to do it, in the same way that children don't eat their vegetables. As part of a healthy lifestyle to maintain one's body function at optimum efficiency, exercise is not a choice, but an essential regime.

People do not value their bodies enough until it is too late, and partly the problem is to do with their perception of exercise. Children will not eat greens until the adult explains that their growth will be stunted if they don't eat vegetables. In the same way, adults can delay beginning a healthy exercise routine by creating all kinds of excuses in their heads. Once again, we're dealing with psychology, it has nothing to do with the starting physical condition of the individual, it has nothing to do with willpower, it is all about how one perceives the tasks at hand.

The task of exercising can often be seen as daunting, an enormous vehicle to overcome. People who don't exercise and want to start, generally set their goal too high. The goal exists as an image or phrase within the individual's mind, but when the bar is set too high, then one's morale may start to wane after a few weeks. So the trick is not what the goal is but rather, how one sets the goal. Whether through imagery or linguistically, the goal can be set so it is an easily accessible target for the body and mind to achieve and gain satisfactory results each time. It is common to say, "I want to lose weight", instead this can be rephrased, "I want to become lighter" - the use of the word 'lose' often comes with negative connotations; nobody wants to lose something. So once we begin to apply these newly reworded goals, the tasks magically become easier and more doable.

The other problem is time; in this day and age, with all our modern technology and devices, we're spoilt for instant results, we expect to get trim and fit in just a few weeks rather than thinking in terms of years. Also modern advertising is partly to blame, as many ads for weight loss and gym programs claim big results within a month, but these claims are false, as the companies that produce these adverts often place a disclaimer in small print at the bottom of the screen or poster to say that it won't for everyone. Time and patience is another topic I will cover in more depth later on, but in terms of exercise and fitness, you won't see results very quickly and because of this there is little incentive to keep going or even start. Most people are stuck in the process of preparing for the day when they 'really need to start' but by then it is too late.

Routines are important, and there are many routines that we perform (naturally and unthinking) on a daily basis that don't provide any immediate benefits. A daily routine that most people perform is washing their hands after using the toilet. We cleanse our hands of bacteria invisible to the naked eye, we can't see the bacteria yet we wash with soap and water with the knowledge that it helps remove the germs. We have such confidence in this routine because in our mind, we envision getting some heinous stomach bug and sitting on the toilet with cramp for hours if we were to ignore it. Brushing our teeth is another one, I do not know many people who don't brush their teeth, and the longer we delay to clean our teeth the more we envision our teeth slowly rotting and decaying right inside our mouths - I think it's hard for many people to skip brushing their teeth for long, even after a couple of days, there might not be any sign of visible decay, but the thought and the fear is there, enough so we're willing to take some time out of our daily schedules to take preventative measures. This is something that has been hammered into you from the day you learnt to brush your teeth and learnt about teeth hygiene, and it stays with you because you know that negligence leads to black rotting teeth which you have seen photos of.

So exercise, what are the consequences of not exercising? We already know what they are - weight gain, heart disease, premature ageing, high blood pressure ... the list goes on, but why are they not enough to shock most of us into exercising regularly? The answer is simply that we cannot imagine those things happening to us in the time frame that those things usually occur, we're talking maybe decades. Teeth decay is a different matter, we've all lost teeth, it's a part of growing up, so it is something that we can relate to, thus we continue to perform our teeth brushing, and we're taught that when we aren't brushing our teeth the decay is occurring all the time. Now we should think of exercise in the same terms, people are more motivated to prevent loss than to work towards gain. Someone may be quite reckless in their life, taking risks like drink driving, but if someone pointed a gun at their head, they may view their life differently, most people are not as response to gain as they are to loss. You could tell someone that by exercising, it will improve their looks, but that might not be the type of gain that they're interested in, but if you say instead that they will lose their looks by not exercising, it might be a more persuasive suggestion.

So we learn that in order to motivate ourselves to become better, we should keep in sight the pit that awaits us should we decide to ignore the advice. Think that each day you delay, you are losing your health, the opportunity to preserve your youth, your overall fitness. We do not need to think in terms of years, because you can wake up tomorrow morning with an extra wrinkle, because each day we fall apart, our bodies are continually decaying when we are not servicing them, this is a reason to begin today, for each hour provides an opportunity to preserve what you have, and tomorrow you can be better than without.