Everyone who starts a fitness program in the upcoming new year is always motivated by new opportunities to grow and a chance to get off on the right track. Maintaining your motivation is a common concern for newcomers, and the following list of practical strategies can help sustain their efforts and build long-term consistency.
However, the key to remember is that motivation will get you started, but discipline keeps you going. At some point in the beginning, there must be a straightforward evolutionary process from motivation to discipline. That process looks like this:
We all get inspired by something to do what we do. With fitness, it is no different. Whether it is the athlete perfecting the sport you want to start or the bodybuilder you want to look like, you were inspired to begin somewhere during the starting process. Maybe this can be an article, movie, social media or a visit to the doctor's office. All have ways of being sources of the spark of inspiration.
Being inspired makes the motivation to get you moving with a fitness routine easier. The main goal of this phase is to build good habits. Building habits while motivated is the easy part, but you still need to be consistent with the timing of your workouts to make this successful. One day, you will have to advance to training when you are not motivated, so be consistent in this "easy phase."
In a few weeks, you may find it easier to wake up earlier or have a lunchtime gym routine built into your day that is becoming "part of your life." Creating these good habits makes it easier to progressively push out bad habits as you start seeing the benefits of consistent training. This is important because you cannot rely on motivation alone to fuel you to get moving, especially when you do not feel like it.
This is the most significant moment of personal growth in this goal-oriented journey. If you can accomplish a workout even when you do not feel like it, you have not only pushed through the initial motivation phase but also started to develop a habit, and you have relied on your discipline to get you through the hard part. By doing this often, you add a scoop of mental toughness to your mind and body connection that will aid you in future challenges that want to prevent you from training that day.
Unfortunately, if you skip the workout and your discipline fails you, you will be tasked with the same challenge the next day. Hopefully, you will feel guilty or regret it and be slightly angry at yourself for allowing comfort to win. If so, redemption is possible at the next opportunity to exercise. Many often work out "just because they did not feel it." This is one of those indicators that even when you stumble, you are still on the right track with your discipline-building lifestyle change.
The other option is to find another source of inspiration and start at Stage 1 again. Some people do this with music before working out; some need to fuel/hydrate, eat a piece of fruit and start warming up. A 10-minute workout warm-up is often enough to build momentum to finish the day's workout.
Good habits can help you change your life in weeks. You will be amazed at your progress if you give yourself a few weeks or months to be disciplined and consistent. People will reinforce your new habits by noticing a difference in how you look, and you will also feel the difference. Because you were consistent with your training, you can now benefit from performance improvements, aesthetics and increased confidence. Your daily ritual goes far beyond fitness and will spread into all areas of your life -- professional, personal, relationships and the mind-body connection.
Many of these days of training when you do not feel like it and during inopportune times make you tougher. Long work hours for deadline projects no longer seem like a chore. The inclement winter weather no longer keeps you bundled inside your house. You soon realize that with all these little victories each morning, your body is 10 times stronger than your brain will let it.
The evolution of inspiration to mental toughness is usually halted at the initial motivation phase. Still, if you make some logical changes and incrementally become more consistent each day, you will find that these habits will change your life. This is how you take a basic source of inspiration and grow it into a lifestyle change. Embrace the process and watch what happens to you.
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