The Secret To Finding The Motivation to Exercise
The magic pill you’re looking for.
It’s that time of year, when you get fired up at the idea of a fresh start and march your way to the nearest gym with grand ambitions and a credit card.
I love the motivation but how do you get it to stick? Studies show that 50–65% of people don’t use their membership after a few weeks.
Why? 99% of fitness advice you’ve been given is bogus. You’ve been sold lies by the industry to keep you on the hamster wheel because after all, there is no money in the cure.
There is a secret, though, and I’m going to share it with you. You only need two principals to accomplish your fitness dreams and sail off to the promise land.
1) Intensity
You’re doing it wrong. The reason you give up after a few weeks is because you’re doing too much. You’ve been sold the idea that every workout has to be record setting and instagram worthy. That’s wrong.
Pushing yourself in the gym leads to burn out, injury, and constant soreness.
Ain’t nobody got time for that.
When I wrote my book, I’d set my daily writing goal to 10 pages, a bar low enough to make it easy to get over. Even if on certain days I had extra juice, I’d forcefully stop. Ten pages was a goal that had me feeling like I was winning, every single day, and I carried that energy to the end, finishing my book in a month. Had I tried to start off writing as much as I could, like what you do when you first sign up at a gym, I would have given up after a week.
The best route is slow and steady. Be the tortoise, not the hare.
A 30 minute medium workout is lightyears ahead of a 2 hour one that has you hating the gym after a few weeks. It’s not sustainable.
2) Momentum
If something is important, do it every day. This will take out friction of having to make the decision in the first place. You just do it, like brushing your teeth. You don’t have to think about it.
There’s enough on your plate, committing to daily exercise takes one less thing off it.
Now combine the first principal with this.
Whose better off: The guy that goes so hard he can only workouts 3x a week because he’s too sore the other days. Or the guy that goes in every day, doing just enough, that he can train daily.
The first guy works out 156 times.
The second guy work at 365.
I’m no math major but it doesnt take a genuis to figure out whose going to be better off.
Lower the bar and do it every day. That’s the magic pill.
