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Jan
18
Keep Your Motivation With You
Filed Under Motivation
In the old days, a knight going off to battle would take a keepsake with him from his beloved. This could be something as simple as a piece of jewelry or a small scrap of cloth. In later years, soldiers going off to wars would take pictures of their wives or letters from home to remind them of what they were fighting for. Now you’re probably asking yourself, what the heck does this have to do with fitness? The answer is, a lot.
Motivation Is Key
Those pictures, rings or letters probably didn’t stop any bullets or deflect any swords, but they did something just as important, they provided motivation. They reminded those men that they had a reason to stay alive and that’s a very valuable weapon. The same applies to fitness and health. In fact, I would say motivation is probably the most important factor in your health.
I can teach you a hundred little tricks for exercising while traveling and a thousand ideas for healthy meals but they could all be summed up with “eat healthy, be active.” So if fitness is that easy, why isn’t everyone fit? The answer is motivation. We know that coke is bad for us but it’s right there and we really want to drink it. We know we should take a walk but that episode of American Idol just started and we really want to see what smart ass remark Simon comes up with. We know we could be healthier but we find a thousand reasons to not do anything about it.
Your Mind At Work
Let me ask you a question, how many times have you rationalized something unhealthy to yourself in the past week? Be honest. How many times have you told yourself “Oh, it’s just a little candy bar, I’ll make up for it later today” or “come on, it’s too late to go to the gym”? How many times have you done something you know is unhealthy but you did it anyway?
The problem is that health and fitness are these vague, long term goals, while that chocolate bar has an immediate and obvious reward. It’s hard to see the impact that one missed workout has, but it’s easy to see the immediate reward that sitting on the couch or surfing the web has. We know health and fitness are important, but it’s just hard to visualize that and put it into perspective next to the immediate and very tangible rewards of unhealthy activities.
Keeping It Real
So here’s where the knight analogy comes in. Those men in armor knew what they were fighting for just like those soldiers realized why they were on the battlefield. However, they took those keepsakes with them as a way of making what they already knew into something real and tangible. It’s hard to remember concepts like freedom when you’re in a war, but it’s very easy to look at a picture of your wife or kids and see exactly why you should stay alive.
Well, this concept applies to fitness and health as well. It’s hard to look at a chocolate bar and remember why fitness and health are important enough for you to give up that immediate reward. So why not keep something with you that makes things a bit more real? For example, my wedding ring. It’s a reminder to me of all those things I keep healthy for. I want to spend many long and healthy years with my wife. I love going dancing with her. I have plans like hiking through South America or sailing through the Mediterranean with her. All of these are reasons to stay healthy and that ring is an immediate and tangible reminder of them. It’s a lot easier to look at that ring and say to myself “I shouldn’t eat this candy bar because I love my wife and I’m going hiking up Masada with her” than it is to say “I shouldn’t eat this candy bar because it will raise my body fat % and cause my heart disease risk to rise by a small percentage”. One of these things is tangible and immediate, the other is vague and hard to visualize. That’s why the first works as motivation and the second fails all too often.
Find Your Motivation and Hang On To It (Literally)
So find something that motivates you. Maybe it’s wanting to play outdoors with your kids or learning to salsa with your wife. Maybe it’s a picture of that mountain you’ve always planned to climb or the beach you want to explore. Whatever it is, find it and then keep a physical reminder of it with you at all times. If you’re trying to rationalize an unhealthy habit to yourself, take a look at that item and remind yourself why your health is important. It works a lot better than trying to visualize your cholesterol level 
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3 Responses to “Keep Your Motivation With You”
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What an awesome post Gal! I love the whole idea of keepsakes like what the soldiers and knights did. Now I’m motivated to go find me one
One of the things I used was my belt. Instead of buying new ones as my waist shrunk, I just kept putting more holes in the old one. By the time I was done, it wrapped more than one and a half times around my waist. It definitely helped to keep me motivated!
A motivation to have a long happy life will also encourage us to live healthy…Sometimes when my husband eat out of control, I remind him that I want to grow old together with him. He sometimes encourage me to do more practise when he felt that my arms is getting bigger than usual :)…Happy family life has been motivating us to live healthy.