I was thinking about motivation this morning.  (As I lay in bed, waiting for the next snooze alarm to blare my poor husband awake for no reason.  Poor guy; his wife’s alarm clock blares Spanish radio every three minutes every morning until she finally gets up… and neither of us speak Spanish…)

Anyway.  Motivation.

When it comes to exercise, how do you get out there and start moving every day, or every other day, or three days a week, or very hopefully not every three years?               

It isn’t logic.  Logic isn’t enough to motivate any of us to exercise each day.  Sure, I can speak and type until I’m blue in the face and develop carpal tunnel syndrome about the benefits to exercise—health benefits, mental benefits, emotional benefits, caloric benefits, anti-aging benefits, physical appearance benefits…

But that isn’t always what we need.  If knowledge were all the motivation we needed, we would all eat right all the time and exercise just the right amount without needing anything more.

It’d nearly put us fitness professionals out of business!

So what else could motivate us to exercise?

Fear is a potential motivator.  I don’t think it’s a good one, though, so I don’t ever use it.  At least, I try to never use it.   Although, knowing that nothing good comes of being inactive, there may be an element of fear in the motivation to exercise.

Then again, if you’ve got a beach vacation coming up, you’re probably scared enough by the thought of yourself in a swimsuit to get you moving!  So maybe fear can be put to good use as a motivator.

Positive feedback is a great motivation to exercise.  I see and hear about it all the time: bootcampers and clients who have been working out for a few weeks love to report all of the comments and compliments they’ve received from friends, coworkers, and family members.

Not to mention their own feedback on how strong and energetic they have become!  Exercise can be very rewarding on several different levels, and that feedback can be powerful enough to keep you motivated.

Another aside: I Googled “what motivates you” and got all kinds of results on job interview questions.  I can’t believe someone asks a potential employee what motivates them.  Isn’t money #1 but we can’t say that so what they’re really asking is how well you can blow smoke in an interview?  What does that tell a potential employer?!  Sigh.

But that’s a good point: none of us amateur athletes get paid for exercising.  I wonder if we did, if it would be just as difficult to get out there?

For me, I rely on many different sources of motivation every day to work out.  Yes, sometimes I just enjoy it but there are a lot of other days I would rather be doing something else.  Fear motivates me sometimes, positive feedback motivates me other times, seeing friends on a run motivates me too.  Sometimes it’s a vague sense of competition (Peggy did lunges because I did lunges and because she did lunges I have to do more lunges), a lot of the time I rely on the knowledge that exercise is good for me for so many reasons I don’t have time to list them individually.

Yet I do still need to be motivated every day.

And I’m still left with the Spanish radio blaring every 3 minutes.  Enough to motivate me to get out of bed in the morning, but not enough to motivate me to get into bed earlier each night!

Are there other things that motivate you to exercise?

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
• 

• Previous Entry: Parents of Type One Kids and Teens
• Next Entry: Sticking With Exercise