5 ways to motivate yourself to exercise

And so, if you are read­ing this arti­cle, then most like­ly you have already tried a cer­tain num­ber of times to force your­self to go in for sports, but all in vain. I’m right? If so, then don’t despair and don’t beat your­self up, because get­ting start­ed is always dif­fi­cult, and most peo­ple approach this issue in the wrong way. And this leads to the fact that, instead of good results, they get dis­ap­point­ed and again for­get about sports for a long time.

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For some rea­son, every­one says that you just need to “want” and every­thing will work out. Or that if you do some­thing for 21 days in a row, it will become sec­ond nature to you. But what do you do on day 25 when it’s rain­ing out­side and you’re des­per­ate­ly want­i­ng to skip your run and sleep an extra hour?

For­tu­nate­ly, psy­chol­o­gists are study­ing how to crack the code for what makes us con­stant­ly do things we don’t always feel like doing. Here are some of their top strate­gies for boost­ing work­out moti­va­tion.

1. Real reward

Of course, some peo­ple may be moti­vat­ed by vague goals such as “bet­ter health” or “weight con­trol.” But if that does­n’t work for you, then why not make the ben­e­fits of your work­out more tan­gi­ble, like indulging in a smooth­ie or a Turk­ish TV series in the evening?

This method is some­what sim­i­lar to how we force our­selves to wake up in the morn­ing and go to work. After all, we know that we will receive mon­ey for this. Our brain con­sid­ers such behav­ior to be log­i­cal, and there­fore we have addi­tion­al moti­va­tion.

More­over, such a method is need­ed only at first. When you see the first results, for exam­ple, your jeans have become some­how huge, then you your­self will want to go to the gym, because you begin to fall in love with a new you.

2. Agreement on obligations

We can make promis­es to our­selves all day long, but research shows we’re more like­ly to keep them when we make them in front of friends. After all, no one wants to fall face down in the mud or seem like a bal­abol.

You can raise the bar even more by sign­ing a con­tract in which you agree to pay your friend 100–200 hryv­nia every time you miss a ses­sion with a train­er. First­ly, you your­self will not want to give mon­ey away just like that, and sec­ond­ly, your girl­friend will def­i­nite­ly care­ful­ly con­trol you and will con­stant­ly be aware of whether you went in for sports or not, because who among us does not want easy mon­ey?

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3. Rethink positive thinking

Adher­ents of pos­i­tive think­ing have long advo­cat­ed visu­al­iz­ing the ben­e­fits of a par­tic­u­lar behav­ior as a moti­va­tion­al strat­e­gy. For exam­ple, when I’m decid­ing whether to get out of bed to go for a run in the morn­ing, it helps me to imag­ine how the sun will shine on my face when I run in the park. Or how hap­py I’ll be when I see my new mus­cles devel­op. This is of course all good, but how to moti­vate your­self to play sports in cold weath­er or when there is no time?

For some rea­son, the sec­ond part of the for­mu­la is often missed. And here it is: hav­ing deter­mined your desire and visu­al­iz­ing the result, you need to deter­mine what is hold­ing you back — this tech­nique is called “men­tal con­trast­ing”.

Feel­ing too tired to wake up ear­ly and go for a run? Try to imag­ine what is pre­vent­ing you from doing this, and once you under­stand how to get rid of the obsta­cle, then cre­ate a plan of action. For exam­ple, “it’s hard for me to get up in the morn­ing, so I will run after work.”

4. Find your fitness group

Let’s face it: no one can pay you to do more squats, hit more miles, or lift more weights.

Prac­tice shows that dis­counts and pro­mo­tions do not moti­vate us to sign up for a gym or go there more often. Who can inspire us to achieve results are peo­ple who have the same goals. After all, these acquain­tances or friends give emo­tions and there­fore we begin to asso­ciate sports not with dif­fi­cul­ties and obsta­cles, but with a warm pos­i­tive soci­ety. This makes us want to return. More­over, there is healthy com­pe­ti­tion that encour­ages us to work hard­er, squat more, jump high­er, and so on.

There­fore, when you choose what kind of sport you want to do, find like-mind­ed peo­ple and every­thing will work out.

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5. Thoughtful schedule

As soon as you decide how you want to tight­en your fig­ure, then care­ful­ly con­sid­er how much time you are ready to devote to train­ing, how often they will be. But don’t for­get to plan your vaca­tion time. Thus, you will help your body to tune in to sports faster. You will plan your time in advance so that it does not run counter to train­ing. After all, if you are already in the mood to get good results, then you should not can­cel your Thurs­day night work­out because you sud­den­ly want to drink wine with your girl­friend.

Dis­ci­pline is always about achieve­ment. You can lis­ten to your favorite stars who will say, as one, that they have work­outs on sched­ule, that they do not can­cel them for noth­ing.

These 5 sim­ple tips will help you moti­vate your­self not to put off exer­cis­ing until Mon­day, the begin­ning of the month, next year. Remem­ber that life is one, and if not now, then when?

Author: Oksana Leshchenko