You had such good intentions at New Years! What happened? You’ve already started skipping gym sessions, and breaking your own rules with your diet!
Here are the top 5 reasons for loss of motivation and momentum:
Your Motivation is Primarily Pain Related
“If I don’t workout then I’ll put on weight / I’ll feel lazy.” “My body is disgusting so I’m not allowed to eat ice-cream.”
As you make progress towards your goals, pain related motivation can diminish – you feel less self conscious, the guilt is less severe.
Motivation is much more effective long term when you focus on what your goals will ADD to your life – feeling energised, confident, sexy, strong, etc, since these get stronger the more progress you make.
Most people have not identified clearly enough WHAT they want and WHY they want it. Create a goal that is so compelling that staying stuck in your previous comfort zone suddenly becomes a pain point for you, because it means that you miss out on your amazing goal.
Your Goals Are Not Genuinely Exciting
Most people briefly imagine what they’d like, then immediately tell themselves they can’t have it. So they shrink their goals down into something that fits into their limiting beliefs. Now you’re left with a goal that doesn’t feel much better than how you feel right now. Make sure your goals genuinely excite you, no matter how daunting that may seem to begin with.
You Don’t Believe You Can Succeed
If you have a belief that “I’ll always be fat” or, “I will find a way to get slim and healthy, and enjoy the process, whatever it takes” that belief will become self fulfilling. Self belief and faith are critical to success. So how do you develop belief when you have never succeeded before?
One of the key things that supports beliefs are references experiences. You brain will reference information it has gathered in the past to assess what is likely to happen. This information comes from three places: personal experience, external information (other people’s stories, books, movies etc), imagination (what you have vividly imagined or fantasised happening).
So you can strengthen empowering beliefs by searching for external references that support them – e.g. other people’s success stories, and by vividly imagining yourself succeeding.
You Still Have An Overweight Identity
You still think of yourself as an overweight person / binge eater / lazy person / whatever identity you associated with in the past that kept you stuck. To succeed in any goal you MUST upgrade your identity. Think of yourself as already a slim, healthy person. Think, act, react, plan, and live your life as though you were already that person. Then allow time for your physiology to catch up to that reality. Your physical body is a delayed representation of your unconscious identity.
You’re Entitled.
The final issue that might be sabotaging your goals, could be that you have subconsciously been conditioned to expect instant, and easy results. You can get movies, TV, food, entertainment, travel, social interaction, and so on, immediately – with the click of a button. Unfortunately somethings – health and wealth particularly – that require hard work, dedication, and tenacity over the long term. Manage your expectations. Expect to face difficulties. Rise up and overcome them.
Author: David Godfrey