Fitness: five steps to motivate yourself

It’s one thing to start a new health regime but how do you stick to it? Oliver Burkeman on the art of training your brain

It’s often said that getting fit and staying healthy are mainly in the mind: they’re a matter of motivation. What’s less frequently mentioned is that the mind is a uniquely disobliging thing; it rarely does what you tell it, and often seems to do the opposite out of spite. To make things worse, we seek motivation from the wrong people: personal trainers, fitness teachers and celebrity gurus. These people are already addicted to endorphins. What do they know of life as a sofa-based curmudgeon who wants (and, at the same time, doesn’t want) to change? The supreme example of a motivation technique that sounds good, but rarely works, is promising yourself a reward. Plenty of studies show that this “extrinsic motivation” backfires: it increases the unpleasantness of exercise. As parenting expert Alfie Kohn said, “The more you reward people, the less interest they come to have in whatever they had to do to get the reward.” Bribe your kids to read and it will seem like a chore they’d never choose. Drag yourself to the gym with the promise of a doughnut, and you’re reinforcing a similar idea. The human brain requires more subtle manipulations. Try these five ways to motivate yourself.

1 Lower the stakes
Exercise feels important (let’s be blunt: it’s because you don’t want to die). But that leads to ambitious fitness goals, which lead in turn to avoidance – because they’re intimidating or you believe you need to wait until you’ve plenty of free time. Set tiny goals: whatever your current capacities – miles per week, lengths per swim – halve them, then work gradually upward from there. This new goal will seem laughable. But that’s good: laughable things can’t be intimidating.

Continue reading...

from Health & wellbeing | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1YMldKp
via health