Nine Factors to Help you Stay Motivated and Succeed

Success in fitness depends on a lot of different factors. Each person will have their own methods for what keeps them focused and determined to work towards their goals, but there are a few factors that are common to most people. By ensuring that you are utilizing the following concepts, you will help ensure that you will achieve your goals in a more productive and pleasurable way. In no particular order:

One: Family & Friend Support
Taking up a new exercise regime will require many changes in your daily routine. You may have to give up some of the responsibilities you previously held in order to find the time to exercise. With supportive family and friends, this task will be much easier.

Two: An Action Plan
You need to have the means to reach your end. Without a detailed account on how you plan on going about obtaining your goals, you will surely have difficulty getting there quickly.

If you just take a casual approach to your goal, you will most likely waste a lot of time and energy just figuring what steps to take next. By having everything outlined from the beginning you will know where you need to go and in which order.

Three: A Reward System
The importance of this is that the rewards are set by you and have a particular meaning to you. This helps keep everything under your control so you won't begin to feel like you are being regulated by someone else.
By setting little rewards after each step in your plan, you will give yourself something to look forward to and keep yourself motivated to keep pushing onward.

Four: Positive Attitude
Having a positive attitude about your workout routine will go a long way to keep you stay motivated and committed. When you have positive thoughts regarding exercise, it makes it seem like less of a chore and more of an enjoyable experience to you. If you remain positive, even when you may not be seeing all the results you dream of, you will still be able to stay focused and look at how much you have achieved.

Being able to look at the big picture is a large step in achieving success, as much of the results you gain from exercise are not noticeable right away, therefore this requires some patience. By staying positive you won't get discouraged as quickly and quit.

Five: Self Motivation
There Are 2 Kinds Of Motivation:

Extrinsic motivation is the kind where you are not really doing an activity because you truly like it, but because you are being rewarded from an external source. For example, if someone was paying you to work out.
This type of motivation tends to decrease our desire to perform the action since we almost begin to regard it as something that has to be done, rather than something we are doing on our own will.

Six: Other Hobbies & Interests
Another factor that is important in your success is having other hobbies and interests. While it's important to be passionate and dedicated to your fitness routine, if it is really your only interest you will become burnt out quickly.
You will probably also ruminate if you are not getting results as quickly as you had hoped since you will feel as if you are putting all your time and effort into this 1 endeavor. Having outside interests will help keep your mind fresh and keep you looking forward to every one of your training sessions.

Seven: Have a Role Model
Role models can be very important tools in any type of programs with a goal. By having someone whom you look up to, you will be providing yourself with a measure on which to measure yourself with.

By having 1 individual who you wish to become more like, you will be able to compare yourself and see which areas you need to improve on and where you have made a good deal of progress.

Eight: Equip with Knowledge
Having a good knowledge base is critical to putting together any workout program. If you don't know a whole lot about fitness and weight training, consulting a personal trainer is a great idea.

On the other hand, if you are more independent, you could take up reading some quality books, magazines, or websites.

Nine: Self-Efficacy
This has been shown to be 1 of the most important factors contributing to success in a workout program. Self-efficacy can be defined as your personal belief that you are capable of performing the behavior or achieving your target.

For eg., someone with high self-efficacy would have confidence in themselves that they will be able to run for 40 min if this is what they decide to do. A person with low self-efficacy on the other hand would not believe they were capable of doing this and therefore would most likely fail miserably. Believing in yourself and your abilities is a large component in sticking with your exercise program.

Final Remarks
By taking time to ensure you include each of these factors into your life before you start a fitness program, you are sure you encounter nothing but success. You will also be less stressed out about the lifestyle changes you are making and everything will run more smoothly.

 

by : Shannon Clark

 

 

Back to Article Listings