3 evidence-based ways to increase your motivation for health and fitness

Motivation is an emotion like anger or joy.  It comes, and it goes.  It’s never there when you need it.  It’s like a cat—untrainable and unreliable. 

When you need to wake up early to hit the gym, motivation wanders off.  You call for it, but it pretends it doesn’t hear you.  

Motivation is also two-faced.  On the one hand, it can be full of positive emotions.  You wake up one sunny day.  The birds are singing.  You strap on your running shoes brimming with motivation.  You’re excited and eager to crush another run.

On the other hand, it can be full of negative emotions.  You open the cupboard and stare longingly at a package of Oreos after a long stressful day at work.  You want them, but your doctor just warned you about your weight.  You're motivated, but you’re motivated by fear.

Long story short, motivation is complicated.

Fortunately there are skills you can develop to master your motivation.  In this article, I’ll show you three of my favorite ways to build steady consistent motivation.  We’ll look at. . .

• How to increase your motivation for the things you enjoy using self-determination theory

• How to give your goals some serious punch using the two futures exercise

• And how to make your underlying values explicit using the “5 why’s” exercise

Let’s dive in!

1) How to increase your motivation for the things you enjoy

First, there are those activities that you kind of enjoy.  Maybe you think lifting weights at the gym isn’t so bad once you get started.  Or perhaps you enjoy your Saturday morning run on warm sunny days.

The activities you enjoy for their own sake are intrinsically motivating.  This is in contrast to extrinsically motivating activities where you need a reward to do them. 

Researchers Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan have conducted the leading research on intrinsic motivation, and their Self-determination theory offers three ways to increase your motivation to do the things you already enjoy.

First, you want to build competence.  You want to get good at what you do.  For instance, if you like lifting weights become knowledgeable and skilled.  If you like running, get good at it.  It’s rather obvious, when you think about it.  Humans like doing things they’re good at, and we hate doing things we suck at.  Being good at anything increases your motivation to do it.

Second, you want to remain autonomous.  Humans are funny creatures.  Tell us to do something, and we immediately revolt.  Being told what to do or how to do it crushes our motivation.  If you’re being coached by “coach hard-ass” you’re motivation will NOT be optimized.  Consequently, if you want to maximize your motivation, stay in the driver’s seat.  Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t seek out and take advice, but it does mean remaining the captain of your ship.

Third, their research suggests you want to find relatedness.  This means finding a tribe.  Finding a group of likeminded people who share your interests in the things you’re doing.  Are you trying to get into obstacle course racing?  Try joining an OCR Facebook group.  Do you want to get into alpine climbing?  Join a club.  Being in a group of like-minding people will do wonders for your motivation.

All right.  That’s all well and good for the things you already like.  What about the things you don’t like? 

2)  How to give your goals some serious punch

Are you’re goals worth it?  Are you committed?  When you’re REALLY committed, you burn the ships.  Doubt fades into determination. The consequences of failure become too steep, and you stop counting the costs.  You don’t know how you’ll get it done, but you know it’s going to happen.

Psychologists call it goal commitment.  The more goal commitment you have, the more likely you are to stay motivated and get shit done.  The soldiers who make it through Navy Seal training have goal commitment.  Olympians and successful business owners have goal commitment.

To develop your own goal commitment, you just need to tell your fitness story the right way.  Here’s how you do it.

In your fitness story, you face two futures.  On the one hand, there’s a future where you achieve your health, fitness and physique goals.  This future is a source of positive emotions.  It calls to you and triggers your approach and reward pathways.  It causes feelings of hope, excitement, curiosity and exploration.  It feels good. 

On the other hand, there’s a future where you fail.  This future is the source of your negative emotions.  It yells at you and triggers your fight or flight pathways.  It causes feelings of fear, anxiety and possibly helplessness.  It feels bad.

Both futures can be motivating, especially if you tell them the right way.  Both stories can increase your sense of goal commitment.

Writing Your Positive future

Imagine a positive future 1 to 3 years in the future.  You have completely crushed your fitness journey.  You are eating great, training and living a healthy, fit lifestyle.  You have created the body you want.

What does that success look like?  What has changed?  When you wake up in that future, what is different?  How do you know you have succeeded?  Do you look different?  Do you perform differently?  Do you do different activities?  Does it feel different?  What does it feel like to be in that new body?  What emotions come with it?  Are you more confident?  Is there a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction?

Take some time just contemplating that future and then write down your goals.  You should end up with 1-3 goals.   Here are some examples:

• I want to lose 20 pounds

• I want to add 15 pounds of muscle

• I want to run a Spartan Beast

Now add as much detail as you can.  Tell a story.  Look at the second and third order consequences of achieving your goal.  If you lose 20 pounds, what happens to your health, longevity, energy levels, confidence, relationships etc.

You should end up with a couple of short paragraphs.

Writing Your Negative Future

Now for the unpleasant bit. I want you to spend some time imagining you fail.  Imagine that you do not improve your nutrition, training or lifestyle.  You keep doing what you’ve been doing.  Three years pass.  What does that look like?  How does that feel? 

Negative futures make us uncomfortable, so we soften them.  We make them seem less bad in our heads.  We envision ourselves as only a little out of shape or only a little unhealthy.  We postpone the day of reckoning into a distant ambiguous future. 

We simultaneously make our desired positive future less appealing.  We envision people who eat healthy as boring.  We envision people who train consistently as obsessed.  If a person spends one hour a day at the gym, she is obsessed, but if that same person spends three hours a day on social media, she is normal.  Our culture helps us lie to ourselves.

The result of all of this lying is twofold.  First, it makes our present more comfortable.  Second, it makes our change less important.  The result is that we rob ourselves of our goal commitment.  We practice being unmotivated. 

Instead, practice being honest with yourself.  What are the futures that you face?

If you are not improving, you are probably declining, and the worse your health and fitness becomes the harder it gets.  Slay the monster while it is small. 

Take some time just contemplating that future.  Again, the more detail you can add, the better.  You should end up with a couple of paragraphs.

3)  How to make your underlying values explicit

Now that you have some goals and a negative future, it’s time to go a step deeper and find your underlying values.  Why do those goals matter to you?  What are the values behind them?  Naming your values is a key part of building consistent motivation.  It’s a key part of increasing your goal commitment.

We’ll borrow an exercise from Precision Nutrition.  It’s called the “5 why’s”.  The purpose is to ask “why” until you find the underlying value behind your goal.  Typically, you hit a point where it doesn’t make sense to ask why again.  Here’s how it works. 

Goal: I want to improve my longevity.

1st why: Why do you want to improve your longevity?

I want to live longer.

2nd why: Why do you want to live longer?

 I want to see my kids have kids.

3rd why: why do you want to see your kids have kids?

I want to be there for my kids and be there for as many important moments as possible.

4th why: Why do you want to be there for your kids?

Value: Because I love my kids and I want to spend as much time with them as possible.  That’s why my longevity matters to me.

 He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. –Nietzsche

Values often come into conflict, so they need a hierarchy.  Your desire to improve your health may occasionally come into conflict with other values.  Sometimes those other values will be more important.  Sometimes not. 

By identifying the explicit reasons you want to improve your fitness, you will more easily navigate those conflicts.  It is important to balance, fitness, health, family, work and recreation intelligently.

Values also orient our perception.  Clear values leads to clear sight.  You will actually see more opportunities for health and fitness.  If you make your values clear and explicit, you will find more opportunities to support them. 

Take time to write down the values that drive your goals.  You should end up with at least one value for each goal, if not two or three. 

So how’s your motivation?  Are you motivated to do these exercises? 

I’ll leave you with one more tip.  Action often comes before motivation.  You don’t need to be motivated to act.  This is especially true for small actions.  If you were motivated enough to read this far, try the exercises.  They won’t take more than 10-15 minutes to get a good first draft.  Maybe that’s all you’ll ever need to find consistent motivation. 

Your health and fitness is worth the effort.

Would you like help making lasting change?

Making lasting change is a skill not a trait, which means you can practice and improve.  Thus, I’ve built behavior change skill development into my coaching program. 

To learn more about my online fitness and nutrition coaching check out the link below.