How to Start Doing the Things You Said You Wanted To Do (But Haven’t)
March 26, 2010
Often people ask me why they can’t just (damn it) do what they say they want to do. I tell them that there are usually two reasons. One is fitness obstacles and the other is fitness blocks. An obstacle is something that makes it difficult for you, like a busy schedule, a bad knee, low energy or no budget for a gym membership. A block is something that makes it almost impossible, like a vague injury, a needy family or a chaotic work schedule. So the first step in accomplishing your fitness goals is to determine whether you have blocks or obstacles. Blocks are tough. They sometimes require a new work schedule or healing. But most people are just obstacled. What do you do when you are obstacled? Figure out a way to get around it. And don’t wait until the moment arrives to figure it out. Make a plan in advance. If you want to get up at 6am to do yoga, don’t count on your morning enthusiasm to get it done. Plan it the night before by making it the last the on your mind. That’s how it gets done. You can trick your mind into doing just about anything, even things you’ve never been able to do before.
One of the hardest obstacles exercisers face when trying to kick off a new habit is getting started. Taking that initial step, especially when you’re unmotivated and haven’t succeeded before, is tough. Taking action means doing something uncomfortable right now, so you end up not doing it. The pain avoidance part of your head finds a million reasons to avoid doing IT.
But you can trick the comfort part of your brain and here’s how:
You take a preparatory action step at an earlier time than when you’re actually going to do the task. For example, the night before you plan to start your yoga regime, lay out your clothes and put your yoga DVD in the DVD player, put your yoga mat on the floor so that NOT doing the morning yoga will almost be harder than doing it!
This is the key to avoiding mental resistance upon awakening. Also, knowing that you don’t actually have to do the yoga while you are preparing for it makes the set-up part even easier. The yoga/work part was still out there in tomorrowland so mental resistance is minimal.
Our brains are hard wired to want to complete tasks that we’ve put some time or money or energy into. Once we get started, we sense that we might as well finish it.
Use this principle to work for you. If you make a plan of action towards a task, your head automatically feels less resistance to continuing because it thinks you’ve already started. This is why I love making to-do lists. My mind, after items are written down, thinks I’ve devised a plan and therefore that I might as well finish. For example, there’s been a frizbee in our back porch gutter all winter. Only when I wrote “get ladder out of garage, retrieve frizbee” did I actually get around to doing it. And I did it within 24 hours because one of my favorite things in the world is crossing items off a list. I prefer an orange highlighter if you must know.
Is there a fitness task you’ve been avoiding? Something you keep talking about doing?
Determine a first step, write it down, lay out your game plan, then take it.
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Ok Babe… you are on! You will be my COACH. I have about 6 inches of this flabby crap around my waist and my boobs are simply out of control!!! Can you help me?