January is the time of year that everyone is talking about motivation and staying motivated to achieve new and better things.  That’s awesome!  It’s always a good time to want more for yourself, so I enjoy the excitement that January brings.

So, how do you keep this motivation alive for weeks, months or years later?  How do you keep it from dying?

Here’s the easy answer per Nike – Just do it.

We like to make it more complicated, but it’s really not. If you have a goal, work toward it every day. Just do it.  If you don’t have a goal, then you get to spend time dreaming to figure out what you want. Just do it.

Yes – it helps to have motivational quotes or pictures around you. It helps to have positive people in your circle. It helps to exercise so you FEEL good enough to achieve other things.  However, ultimately it’s your choice to just do it.

So why don’t we “Just do it”? Wouldn’t that make everything easier?

We don’t because we haven’t trained our brains to believe certain things are possible.

I’m reading a book called What to Say When you Talk To Yourselfby Shad Helmstetter. So far, one of the most striking points is about how our brains are programmed. We believe what we are repeatedly programmed to believe based on our upbringing, parents, teachers, friends, life experiences, and what we say to ourselves every day.

To achieve something new, we have to adapt our programming to believe it’s possible to have this new thing. We have to BELIEVE it’s possible to lose weight or run a marathon or eat well every day. If we don’t believe it, then we’ll never achieve what we’re after because our brain won’t let us.

Maybe this is getting too scientific, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

Helmstetter further discusses:

• Programming creates beliefs
• Beliefs create attitudes
• Attitudes create feelings
• Feelings determine actions
• Actions create results

Typical motivation strategies cater or our attitudes or feelings, but they leave out the internal programming and beliefs that need to be updated or changed.  We must start at the beginning to truly create a lasting change.

Get the book. It’s $5 on Amazon. Read 10 pages a day and let me know how you like it!

If you’re ready to make a healthy change, or take your fitness to the next level, then I’d love to help.  Contact me to get started!

If you’d like, sign up for my monthly newsletter to get these posts in your inbox.

Comments

comments