I met with someone who had recently attended an event I was leading. In his words it was “the hardest thing” he had ever done. It had completely knocked him for six and had him questioning how he was living his life.
During the event, he tried to quit. A few stern words of encouragement, talked him off the ledge and he continued. Something he was very grateful for.
In meeting with me he was hoping to get some insight into how he could change his mindset and stay on track with training and living the kind of lifestyle that he ultimately wanted but didn’t always follow through on.
The first question: “How do you stay motivated?”
My answer: “I don’t”
Truth is, I don’t believe in motivation, I’m often unmotivated (just like many of you) and the notion of being highly motivated all the time is just false. Motivation is so finite, it’s like a poof of air that disappears.
His second question: “So, how do you stay on track then?”
I don’t consider myself to be different from anyone else. I’ve done things in my life that may have shaped who I am and what I do, but I still have to be intentional about living a life that promotes health and fitness.
Here some tips that work for me:
- Replace the need for motivation with building habits. Read the book Atomic Habits for a deep understanding of this but you will always fall back towards your habits. If you have bad habits, they won’t serve you well. Some examples you can easily build; drink water when you wake up, shop only in the produce section and work out at the same time each day.
Simple habits done over a long period of time will yield huge results.
- Put your workouts in your calendar. I work off google calendar, if it’s important to me, then it goes in my calendar. Workouts in my calendar are non-negotiable. It would only get moved for extreme circumstances or if I had some flexibility to do it at a different time of the day. I try to schedule my workouts at times I know I will have the freedom to get it done – for many people this is early morning.
- Expect it to be hard – this is a stoic approach. If you have the mindset that because you’ve joined a gym, it’s now going to be easy to stay on track and achieve your goals. In reality you’re going to be disappointed because it’s still going to be difficult.
How many times have you been grocery shopping, bought all the food that you’d need to make quality meals – but ended up ordering takeaway or going out for dinner. Doing one thing well (the grocery shopping) doesn’t make the next thing (preparing the food) any easier. If we have the expectation that it will be easy and then it isn’t, that can be worse.
- Remove choices. If you set your alarm for 5am to hit an early morning class, remove the option to snooze. Remove the option to each poorly. Remove the option to not workout. These options we give ourselves make it easier to make the wrong choices (often the easier choice that we regret).
- Probably the most important – change your internal identity. I have two major driving factors that keep me maintaining a high level of fitness.
I own a gym and I coach fitness – I could not live with myself if I did not embody the ultimate standards in fitness. I could not give advice on lifestyle and nutrition if I lived off pizza and beers. I could not offer a 5x week membership at my gym if I didn’t train at least that amount. My internal and external identity is someone who maintains a high level of fitness
I’m a father – in a time when kids obesity is at its highest and schools don’t prioritise fitness, as a parent I have to show them that this stuff is important. I can’t tell them or just sign them up to program because they will always fall back to the example I set them. My internal identity is of a person who wants to raise active and healthy kids.
There’s no magic in staying on track. It’s often a grind because it can be hard. The people who are successful usually follow the tips above. They often have a group of like minded people that they train with, they value their performance in the gym which can lead to better choices outside of the gym.
Often it comes down to finding the place that allows you to be successful…
