Being motivated at the start of something is an amazing feeling isn't it? Don't you ever feel so 'pumped' up at the start of something, maybe a project, or a new job, or a weight loss journey, because you can vision and desire the outcome? It excites you doesn't it?
If you know what I'm talking about, then you probably know (and fear) what comes next. The fall. There's always that point in a new journey where that energy from motivation starts to die out. Your weight loss (or gain) journey starts to come to a halt because you've hit a plateau and you're not seeing the results you're hoping for so you feel like your hard work isn't paying off. Or maybe you started a clean eating schedule and then it's football season and you have a streak of days (maybe weeks) of not eating according to your diet plan, so you start to shy away from it. It's really easy to lose confidence and therefore be inconsistent.
Motivation can be applied across many aspects of your life such as business, health, relationships, interpersonal and so on. Covering all aspects in a general sense will be too vague I believe and might not be successful in trying to get my point across. Therefore, I'm going to provide a way to help you get motivated again using an example of an aspect of our lives we all need motivation in: your physiology.
Re-Establish Your Purpose
At the beginning of your fitness journey, what did you say to yourself? What did you PROMISE yourself?
Some thoughts may include:
"I want to be more healthier"
"I want to have more energy"
"I want to feel better about myself"
"I want to build more lean muscle mass"
Of course there are more variations thereof, but what I'm talking about here is that when you say these things to yourself before you start on any fitness journey, you're establishing your identity, your purpose. Even if you don't take you fitness too seriously, you're still establishing something from the beginning what will ultimately be your guide and support throughout the journey even in times of hard struggle. Be careful with this step however, because what you establish here will (or should) stick throughout your journey. If it's not solid enough, you WILL crumble in times of struggle and frustration.
Side-Bar: What I mean by 'Identity' is a way to indicate your current philosophy about yourself. In other words, you can think about it this way: If there were 3 words or phrases to describe yourself, what would they be? For example, I could say 'I am passionate about fitness', 'I am someone who inspires others to do what they love', and 'I am a happy, vibrant, and enthusiastic person'. That's establishing your identity.
By no means should a lack of motivation require you to QUIT! Because all you need to re-establish your purpose. You need a purpose big enough to bust through all the excuses. When you build an identity strong enough, you're going to look back at the excuses and laugh at yourself for making them in the first place. That's what I did. We all have excuses. I still have excuses. But it's only because I lacked to build a strong purpose or a 'Why' as some call it. So, I dug deeper, learned more about myself, and found reasons why I wanted to start and change my physiology and hence, my life for the better. Such reasons included, I wanted to FEEL better about myself and that I wanted to actually accomplish something meaningful to me. Re-establish, that's all.
To read the rest of this article, you can visit Brandon's daily fitness blog at http://www.thelast3reps.com/how-to-boost-your-fitness-mindset. Brandon grew up as an overweight kid all his life, being as much as 50lbs overweight. He decided to change his life back in 2007, and to this day is in the best shape of his life. He has become so passionate about health and fitness, he wants to share everything he has learned about fitness and life on his blog here: http://thelast3reps.com/
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