Excuses, Excuses…
Here’s the thing… exercise I’m pretty good at. I can DO exercise. I feel good exercising.
Once I get off my butt that is. There are so many excuses to come up with, though. All day long as I sit at my desk, I come up with excuse after excuse for why I should not workout when I get home.
“I have to run errands”
“I have to cook dinner for me and Jason and there won’t be enough time”
“I feel like I’m coming down with something, I better just lie on the couch and get better”
All said with a whiney voice and a little stamp of the foot, of course. Why do I even do this? Why bother wasting time actually thinking of reasons to not be healthy? It’s not like anyone else really cares, it doesn’t affect them at all. I have no clue why I do it, I’m just lazy. And good at justifying things to myself.
When I was in gymnastics of course we had someone telling us to do all those crazy things we did. We had a coach for this, a coach for that, a coach yelling at us to keep running, hold that squat, stay in a handstand. Sure, we could cheat when they turned their backs (and, I won’t lie, we often did), but they were on us all the damn time, making sure we did the things we needed to do to be strong and fast and flexible. And in gymnastics people did care if we were actually doing those things that we needed to do. It affected our performance, it affected our scores in competition, it affected the team. So yeah, plenty of people cared if we were putting in the effort and there just were no excuses. They didn’t matter.
Now the challenge is to make excuses not matter when it’s just me (or just you). To say, sure, I can stop after only 30 seconds because no one is watching, but keep going anyway. To be the coach and the athlete and stay motivated.
How do you stay motivated? What tricks have you learned?
Filed under: Mind | 3 Comments
Tags: athlete, coach, exercise, fitness, gymnastics, health, motivation, women's health
After many many years of making many many excuses I have come to realize these things:
There is no such thing as getting into shape/getting back to my ideal weight–and not ever having to exercise or diet again.
I have to just make it a rule: plan to exercise every day.
I have to do some exercise every day or I don’t feel good.
I have to live today doing all the things I know I have to do because today is my only day–tomorrow doesn’t exist. That means eating right, not drinking too much, exercising.
That sounds boring, but if I do it, I feel so much better that I am so much happier and never bored.
Therefore, I am motivated by how much better I feel.
Excuses only satisfy those who make them. That’s what my dad use to tell us. The only way I stay motivated, my “gymnist coach” like in your situation, is to be around like minded people. When in high school and college, if I wanted to crank out the best grades, I hung out with the geeks at the library. I could ALWAYS look back to the company I kept as a key factor of how I was performing in anything. The same with eating right/exercising. I fall off the wagon when surrounded by people who don’t care what they eat or about staying in shape. My weakness is instead of being the one who inspires them to do good, I let them negatively influence me to do bad. In being my own coach and athlete as you put it, I’m learning to be strong enough to not pick up a coke can just because everyone else is or to turn down offers from the Mrs. who says I’m at the store can I get you anything. I’m learning to slay the dragon of instant gratification so that inching towards my goal can be a lasting reward.
That is so true, peer pressure, positive or negative, is such a large influence on all of our lives. I guess the hard part, if you are lacking in self-discipline, is in finally realizing that maybe certain people just aren’t good to have around when trying to reach certain goals, and then making the decision to remove the negative influencers from your life. I’d love to say that my self-control is ironclad, but sometimes the only thing I can do is change my surroundings to suit my goals. I’m working on that though