Many people feel as though motivation is simply something that comes and go based on the day, and that discipline is much more important to cultivate. This is absolutely true for nine out of ten circumstances. Motivation is fleeting, whereas discipline can build your character. This is why New Year’s resolutions can often fail despite your good intentions because a lack of scheduled habit changes will ensure your decision is unstable in the long term.
However, sometimes you do need motivation. Just like how sometimes, your vehicle needs premium fuel, now and then you need that extra fuel to remind you of why you work out in the first place, to express your strength and ability and to feel your primal, most amazing self. It might be that you’re hoping to bust through a personal record time on the track, or you have a very heavy squat challenge coming up. Motivation helps with this. It’s a muscle to be trained, despite having limited corporeal form.
Here’s how to develop it:
Photo by Becca Matimba on Unsplash
Inspirational Speeches
Riding public transport, walking, cycling or driving to the gym can become a major motivational event. How? Inspirational speeches. It might be you listen to ET The Hip Hop Preacher on your way in, or perhaps you are more partial to movie speeches. These super-intense speeches from the heart can help you find your inner lion, walking into the gym with the strength of a soldier king or warrior queen, ready to face your load in the most sensible but passionate manner possible. We all love a good inspirational speech from time to time. Allowing one to fuel the content of your workout if used sparingly, alongside a sports nutrition pre workout will both help you to no end.
Music
Of course, words can only take us so far. Sometimes it takes a great musical playlist to help us make the most of our workout, with either high BPM’s or intense melodies or perhaps otherworldly instrumentation. Crafting your own playlist in your streaming app ahead of time could potentially help you truly ‘lose yourself to the music’ during your long run or personal best squat. Just make sure that this music will help you focus with passion, not distract or make you too frantic when working out.
Look At Your Progress
Sometimes an artificial helper is not necessary. Sometimes you just need to see how far you’ve come in order to motivate yourself to future gains. Some people may hear that and think ‘but what if I haven’t a storied career of achievements in the fitness realm to look back on?’ It might be that you do but don’t realize it just yet. If you’ve been a couch potato all your life, are overweight or obese, but have conducted one or two gym sessions so far, that should be motivation enough. You have made the decision to better yourself and your health. This should be the most admirable decision you have made lately, something you should truly feel genuinely proud of. To think anything else is to deceive yourself.
You deserve to feel amazing about any incremental progress you make because it would not have happened without your effort – no matter how humble. You will never see anyone look at someone overweight in a gym with a mocking perception, and if you do those people are not worth caring about thanks to their flawed character in the first place. The moment your footsteps over that threshold you have made a great decision that day, and deserve to feel it. Proving to yourself just what you are capable of can be motivation for a lifetime if you let it.
With these three markers of renewed motivation, you will make progress you had never thought possible.
Featured Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash
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