Motivation Revisited

BUILDING BLOCKS OF MOTIVATION:

First it is important to consider what motivation IS NOT. Motivation is not emotion. This is why being inspired may be short-lived, in terms of long-term exercise adherence. Putting together a series of runs or walks week by week for several months in a row requires something more stable and permanent than the motivation of a football team half-time speech or the emotion that football team uses to run through the paper team banner, the runthrough screen, at the start and at halftime of games.

Motivation is also not wishing or promising. Brian Tracy says that a goal that is not written down is just a fantasy.

How does one get motivation---the intrinsic kind that is self-perpetuating? What are these building blocks of motivation?

First, motivation comes from setting reasonable short and long term goals. Yogi Berra once said that if you don’t know where you’re going you might end up somewhere else. You need to have a track to run on, you need to know where you are going and have a plan for getting there. This gives you a focus. Olympians and other athletes all say that goal setting procedures account for the majority of their improvement in performance.

Secondly, motivation comes from Habit Formation. Look at time differently. Jeff Galloway has written several articles on strategies about alternative plans to get in workouts to help this habit formation. For example, it is much more important to do something compared to how long you do it. Doing is much more important than how long.

Here are some strategies to get through Marathon training in have intrinsic motivation at the end:

Do your long runs with a local running group and bond over common misery. Know any local running groups in Sugar Land?

Schedule your runs/walks and plan fun activities after them. Run to your rewards. Psychologists call this the Premack Principle.

Try crosstraining 1 or 2 days per week.

Run in a new place.

What to do when you are ready to drop out of a long run or you question your motivation:
Imagine the marathon start with thousands of runners lining up—the only way you can pull yourself to the starting line and then to the finish is by not dropping out today. Keep on running; aim for the lamp post ahead, then the big tree, then up the hill (if you can find one). If you stop, just take a walk break; it is great to rest the critical left brain and great for the right brain.

Pick a few friends you know to be committed runners with a proven track record of intrinsic motivation.

Lastly, motivation comes from results. Celebrate those results. Buy a new pair of running shorts or shoes to reward yourself for an accomplishment, like finishing the longest run ever, a race, or even doing all runs for a week or two week period.

So, motivation has three building blocks: Set Goals, Develop a new habit, and Celebrate the results.

What is the purpose of goals besides developing our motivation? John Ruskin, English critic in the early 20th century said, “the highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.” Jim Rohn says the purpose of goals is to become the kind of person who could accomplish that goal. Very similar.

Since we have the Olympiad as a backdrop, Gold is not the glory, the pursuit of Gold is.

Until next time, there you have it.