When I started my personal campaign to lose weight after Vivian was born I was stoked at first to begin ‘moving’. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me (which in fact it had) and I finally could move with a lot less effort. It felt nice to not have a belly to hit every time I did any large movements.
Sadly the euphoric effects of having delivered a healthy baby with my own amazing body started wearing thin and I had a more difficult time staying motivated. I started “over-analysis” of every workout I did. I would be moving along with my video (since that’s what I find is easiest to use with two kids at home), and wonder why I was doing this or that and what was the difference anyway?!
This negative thinking started making my workouts feel more like drudgery than anything that could possibly be rewarding and my motivation lasted two days….then I realized something….I have been through this cycle before when I was in high school and an early morning “morning-side” speaker had the topic of “Enduring to the End”. Not that enduring to the end is a bad thing, quite the contrary…but it was my attitude about enduring; that because I was merely enduring it was drudgery!
For example, when I was in P.E. in high school, the whole time I ran around the track I literally said “Endure to the End” in my mind to the rhythm of my slow jog. Then I would look down at my feet and think “Gosh, I wonder how many of these measly steps until the end!” “I wonder how I’ll ever get my pace up…maybe I’ll never get my pace up!” I would get slower and slower with all of this over-analysis of what I was doing.
Then I read something about a runner who doesn’t run because she wants to lose weight or because she wants to win. She ran for the sole purpose of “Feeling the strength of her body in movement”. She wasn’t enduring to the end of each run…she was enduring well because she was enjoying just the simple act of “being in the moment” and not worrying about the future per se.
It reminds me of a quote by Joseph B. Wirthlin that I have on a plaque in my Living room that reads “Come what may and love it.”
Some things do not seem possible to find the good things about them… such as I have rods in my back which make it so I can feel every storm system that passes by and I have limited movement which sometimes makes things a little tricky. On the positive side, I can have children without dying of suffocation, and I can breath well in the shower (which I wasn’t able to do because of the steam being too thick before my surgery). As a side note, breathing is good!
My point is that you can convince yourself of anything. Either you can choose to be negative and paralyzed because of your mindset or you can choose to be positive and motivated because of your mindset. My favorite high school teacher Mr. Wendel used to say “Never say Don’t because then you Can’t”.
The mind is such a powerful thing. I really have learned this with my hypnobabies studying that your perceptions of the way things are has a direct link between how things will be played out. I absolutely loved the affirmations C.D. that came with the hypnobabies course because it helped me think positive thoughts about childbirth and pregnancy. This isn’t to say that your mind is so powerful that it can make things turn out perfectly for you—I still don’t make enough breast milk but I can rejoice that I have other healthy options for my babies. Undesirable things happen to positive people too. The point is that both positive and negative thinking are powerful markers for capability.
I know that people think aerobic videos are really really cheesy but I have news about them. That cheesy positive attitude is motivating if you just let it be and don’t waste your energy feeling silly about it. Confession: I have this cheesy aerobic workout video that really boosts my motivation to work out and continue working out. It’s the Denise Austin Fat Burning Blast. During the video she says some lines that when I first got the video I was rolling my eyes about, such as: “Put a smile on your face, because we’re going to burn fat naturally by exercising!” “If you rest you’ll rust” “Think strength” “Think graceful” “Now have a little fun”. They seem pretty corny at first but they actually are phrases that I think when I do other workouts as well which is good.
For one, when you smile during an activity, even a difficult one, your brain signals catch that and send out endorphins which make you feel happy about what you’re doing so you want to continue doing it more.
Secondly it helps you focus on the positives of what you are doing with your body and according to a Cleveland Clinic Foundation study that “for 15 minutes a day, five days a week, volunteers imagined exercising certain muscles as vigorously as they could. After 12 weeks, the muscles had strengthened by as much as 15 percent… Visualization may send signals from the brain to the neurons controlling movement; the stronger the signal the stronger the muscles.” [Parenting, March 2010, p.22]
Besides all of the positive things that are said in workout videos I am of the opinion that when we exercise we are training ourselves to be under a certain level of hypnosis. When I used to run three miles a day I realized that thinking about other things while running made my run feel so much easier than actually thinking about running. It’s just like when you’ve driven to the same place everyday for a month and then one day you get there and realize that you don’t even remember driving there.
If I just do what I need to do (i.e. exercise) consistently and with acceptance and ideally excitement, (“I get to work out! This is time for me that no one can take away”) that it needs to be done, it becomes a lot less of a drudgery. Hooray for positive thinking! I am virtually what I think about….whether it is negative, positive, cruel or benevolent. It’s all in choices that I make whether consciously or not.
Here’s one of my favorite little mantras that hangs in my home given me by a friend who’s a life coach.
I choose
to live by choice
not by chance
to make changes
not excuses
to be internally motivated
not manipulated
to be useful, not used
to excel, not compete
I choose self-esteem
not self pity
I choose to listen
to the inner voice
not the random
opinion of others
--Anonymous
Hopefully I will keep reminding myself of positive things as I work towards my goals and never quit. Because…
“Winners never quit and quitters never win”.
--unknown
That's awesome! I think I really needed that. Not that I've been working out really, but lately (and mainly due to chronic headaches) just every day life has begun to feel like a drudgery. I've thought of the whole "endure to the end" phrase but that just makes me wish the end were here already. It's not a happy thought. One thing I have noticed that helps me a ton is to have music playing so that my mind has something else to think about while I go through my day. Sort of like how you said that running was easier when you thought about something other than running. It makes perfect sense to me that when you're doing something like that, something that is repetitive movement that if you think about it while you're doing it, it will become monotonous and mentally strenuous. But if you allow your body to repeat the rhythm while allowing your mind to freely wander elsewhere, then you can do the same things without that feeling of tedious monotony. Thanks for sharing, I've really never thought about it like this before. :}
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