I teach a course called “Exercise Motivation and Adherence”. Truth be told, though, I am a lousy motivator—at least I perceive myself (at times) to be. Sometimes, the toughest person to motivate is oneself. I understand the principles of motivation—especially as they apply to exercise adherence. Personally, exercise motivation is easy. My difficulty lies in the remaining dimensions of “well-centered fitness”—Spiritual, Intellectual, Emotional, and Social.
Intellectually, as a university professor, I don’t have much choice, but to push myself Intellectually. I do enjoy learning, after all. Still it can be a challenge to read regularly and to engage my mind in things other than my “work”.
Spiritually, as much as I desire to practice “I am third” (i.e., “my God is first, my family and friends are second, and I am third”), I can’t be truly selfless, because I expect others to be selfless. This always cycles me back to self-centeredness. Daily, I must reset my course.
Socially, it is a struggle to not push people away and become isolated out of feelings of isolation. Sometimes it takes effort to feign interest in others (going back to the Spiritual struggle). It is often easy to ignore the strong relationships in one’s life for the weaknesses in the relationships that remain. Honestly, it is my laziness and unwillingness to muster the motivation that causes my Social struggles.
The Emotional dimension is the keystone of “well-centered fitness”. It is easy to say “fake it ‘til you make it”, but it hard to put words into action. Thus, my best efforts at self-motivation require a concerted effort toward grattitude—i.e., and attitude of gratitude.
It is essential that I view the day-to-day struggles to become well-centered as “opportunities”. This, however, is rarely an easy task.
It is necessary to surround oneself with Purpose—the “why” for the circumstance at hand—and to understand that the why is not always for the purpose of self (hence, “Purpose”—the greater universal purpose for any given circumstance).
One reason I always show the movie, What About Bob?, in my Exercise Motivation and Adherence course is because it emphasizes the necessity of “baby steps” in our lives. We are rarely going to make leaps of progress in our lives. Most often, we are baby stepping from moment to moment and the progress is imperceptible. On occasion (quite often), we will step backward. The key is to keep the overall movement going forward.
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!