We often get questions and feedback about motivation. More specifically getting motivated or feeling motivated.
Now, we could go on for pages and pages about motivation (and if you want to read some of our thoughts on how in many cases, motivation might not be all that important, you can click here).
Recently at Park Fitness, we shared an excerpt from James Clear’s Atomic Habits where he talks about our behavior and identity.
“The more you repeat a behavior, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behavior. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin words essentitas, which means being, and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your ‘repeated beingness.’”
Often we’ll tell members at Park Fitness that sometimes you just have to do the thing, if your goal is to do the thing.
Let us explain further.
Taking action often provides us with the activation energy we are looking for to be productive and do the task we are after.
If your goal is to get a good bit of laundry done, sometimes just throwing some towels in the wash can help you get started and then get more things washed and dried overall.
The same is true for other behaviors. Sometimes, just getting our workout clothes on, or starting our workout, helps us do more.
Additionally, what we identify with helps a great deal too.
Identifying as an exerciser opens the door to do more working out because that is how we see ourselves: as a person who works out.
We can take this a step further with any fitness goal by identifying with the type of person who has already attained the goal we are after.
For instance, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds you can ask yourself, “what would a person who has attained this goal do?” What would their actions be like? What do their activity habits and nutrition behaviors look like?
If your goal is to do your first full pull-up or increase your deadlift, ask yourself what would a person who has achieved this goal do? What would their workout habits look like? What else are they doing?
Simply doing the thing (working out, adjusting our nutrition, getting better sleep, etc.) can be the catalyst to keep going.
It can give us the energy we need to finish and help us identify as the type of person who achieves the goals we are looking for.
So let’s get started on this today. Let us know how we can help.
Digital High Fives,
Danny & Joe
Park Fitness
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