Okay, okay, I’ve forgiven them for the annual fitness challenge.
I’ve been enjoying reading Participaction’s weekly fitness challenge.
The most recent one was about motivation.
Your task for the week?
Write down the reasons why you’re resolving to change or set a goal. When we identify our why we develop a clearer understanding of our motivations to follow through.
It was Frederick Nietzsche who said, “He who has a why can endure any how.”
Understand what you want to change, and why you want to change it, before you set your goal. If you need some help, read the blog below for practical thought-starters.
See their post, 5 questions you must ask to find your why, pursue your passion, and unleash your deepest motivations
Their idea is that you ask what you care about and then ask why you care about that. We search for the intrinsic motivation underneath all the instrumental ones. Dig deeper, past the trvial stuff. The idea seems to be that when you dig deep enough you’ll find motivation to exercise.
Is that true though?
Maybe deeper motivations aren’t actually aren’t that motivational.
I really do care about my health at 80 but frankly it’s not that motivational. What does motivate are the direct and immediate benefits of physical activity. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good not in 30 years but now. And it turns out that is a far batter motivator than distant though important benefits.
From the blog post, Want to do something consistently? Make it feel good
“Some years ago, my colleagues and I conducted a study in which we examined the impact of people’s reasons to start exercising on their actual involvement in exercise. We first asked the participants to state their reasons or goals for exercising, as I just asked you. Then, to uncover their higher-level reasons for exercising, we asked them why they cared about obtaining those particular benefits.
My colleagues and I found that 75 percent of participants cited weight loss or better health (current and future) as their top reasons for exercising; the other 25 percent exercised in order to enhance the quality of their daily lives (such as to create a sense of well-being or feel centered). Then we measured how much time they actually spent exercising over the course of the next year. The answer may seem counterintuitive, but it’s true: The vast majority of the participants whose goals were weight loss and better health spent the least amount of time exercising overall—up to 32 percent less than those with other goals.”
How about for you? What gets you out the door?
|
|
