Do you struggle with getting into a habit or feeling motivated enough to continue in the long term?
You know and understand how great you will feel physically and mentally as a result of a regular regime but You might be missing the “why” part of the puzzle.
When it comes to health and fitness knowing your “why” is an extremely important and often overlooked factor in setting your goals. It’s a crucial component for goal setting not just in your fitness but also in other areas of your life.
You need to check that your personal fitness goals have enough “depth” and that you want to achieve them badly enough. Understanding this becomes your “why.”
Help with Setting Realistic Fitness Goals
Don't take one step further, I want you to have already set some personal fitness goals for yourself. Whether you’ve recently set your goals or are already working towards them, take yourself through the S.M.A.R.T goal setting process to give yourself more of an elaborate way to morph your goals to I don’t know why I’m doing this to more of a crystal clear path.
If you have forgotten what S.M.A.R.T goals are, take a look at the blog post before this one.
This is an acronym to really pin point and specify your goals.
How to Find Your Why
Let’s simplify your why with a basic step-by-step process:
Brainstorm what your passionate about, what drives you, your values and strengths
Record your thoughts about what is really important to you. List your most important values in life and the things you are passionate about. Where do your strengths lie?
Look back into your past to a time when you felt like a better version of yourself at the moment. Can you identify what some of the contributing factors were that helped you achieve your dream body? What aspects of your life made it easier for you to reach your goals then? Was it the people that supported you, your work environment, your coach keeping you accountable, or something else?
Now envision your future. What does it mean for your health, fitness, happiness, and lifestyle? In 1 year? How about 5 years, or 30 years? Again, record your answers because they’ll help you clarify what you want and why it’s important to you.
Make sure you have a plan for some ongoing actions that are going to keep you connected to your “why”. Creating a vision board can help remind you of all the things that make you feel excited, that are important to you, and take you closer to your long-term goals.
‘Knowing your Why’ takes your Fitness Goal setting to a Deeper level
Forces you to think about your core values and what you are truly passionate about.
Most people think first about the “what”, then the “how, and finally the “why”.
When you change your approach and actually reverse it and start with “why”…the “how” and “what” will fall in line because you’ve started with your core beliefs. This creates a solid foundation from which to take inspired actions that will lead towards you achieving your goals. You can start this today!
Consider what is your “why” and why it is important for YOU to reach your fitness goals. You must have a strong emotional reason to be successful in achieving your personal fitness goals.
If not, it’s unlikely you will actually put in the work that is required for you to be successful.
For example, a goal of “losing weight” needs to have a personal, emotional driver behind it to determine that it is important enough to achieve and maintain. keep telling yourself why you want to lose the weight. Eventually, you will get to the deep-seated pain you want to avoid and/or pleasure you want to seek.
“I want to keep up with my kids, I want to feel confident about my body and naked”.
Pain Avoiding or Pleasure Seeking?
Did you know avoiding some sort of pain is usually the strongest type of emotional driver? You’ll likely focus on positive thoughts and actions to take you closer towards your health and fitness goals. But that doesn’t mean that the true, deep driver (your “why”) hasn’t stemmed from something negative. If it’s going to push you forward to live your best life then go for it.
Other people seem to respond better when looking at the “why” behind their fitness goal setting in a positive way. The underlying or internal focus is on what you really want for your life. “I want to be alive, fit, healthy, and full of energy at the age of 80, and to know that, I have eat healthy exercise daily, keep my brain active throughout my life.”
This also doesn’t mean that your “why” can only be one or the other, it may well include both pain avoiding and pleasure seeking elements. Unless you have considered these on a deep level before, you probably still need to do some more reflection within yourself and question yourself “what is your why?”
Final Thoughts
When you’ve got a really strong, clear reason for achieving your goals, you’ve already taken the first step towards achieving them. If there is a lot of built up emotion behind your why, that’s probably an indication that you really know what’s important to you and you’re ready to move forward.
Always remind yourself of your “why” and do it often. Consider when you do write down your “why” post it somewhere you will see on a regular basis.
The days that you feel unmotivated, lazy, and just lying there in bed, instead of going to the gym this is where you “why” kicks into action.
When you really understand your “why” and it’s truly important to you, your underlying “internal”motivators will kick in and get you out of that funk and to live your best life and The best version of you.
-Joel
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