Motivation, Self-love and Workouts
It’s normal to feel so tired and uninterested in doing anything sometimes. However, when a lack of motivation in making moves becomes persistent, then alarm bells must go off. When you’re uninterested in making moves, that’s when you most need to make moves.
As an athlete, motivation is a big part of what gets you going. Motivation goes beyond your routines but into other facets of your life. But when down, how do you get yourself motivated to carry on with your training and to carry on pursuing your life’s goals. Read on to see just how.
What is Motivation?
Motivation is simply the driving force behind human action. Motivation is derived from the word “Movere,” which means “to move” or “to drive.” Motivation drives you to achieve your goals; it helps you to work towards achieving your goals by initiating and guiding you towards goal-oriented behavior. Motivation causes you to act towards achieving your goals. Motivation is a social, emotional, cognitive, and biological force that drives humans to behave. Motivation is a factor that causes you to act towards achieving your goals; it is a force behind every goal-orientated action man takes. Different theories explain why people behave the way they do or theories that explain the process of motivation; we have the humanistic theory, instinct theory, and drive theory. These theories explain the forces that cause one to act in certain ways.
What is self-love?
Self-love simply means to love oneself and how you view and treat yourself. Self-love means having a high regard for oneself in respect to one’s happiness, well-being, psychological, physical, and spiritual growth. Self-love implies taking care of yourself without sacrificing your well-being to please other people. Self-love and motivation are interwoven; self-love causes you to act in certain ways that benefit you.
Being aware of yourself, loving your person, and taking care of yourself is as important as your mental health. Humans make mistakes, but what self-love does is that it helps you to understand your mistakes and loses and relates with yourself in a way that you can communicate with yourself about the circumstance surrounding the event without being too harsh on yourself. Self-love helps reduce anxiety and depression, recover fast from stress, increase your optimistic outlook on life, and increase your overall well-being. Self-love helps you see your worthiness, value, and happiness without being judgmental, even amid a crisis. Your self-love helps to increase your overall positive sense of self. Having a positive sense doesn’t mean that you will always feel happy, as there are times when you may temporarily feel angry, disappointed, and upset with yourself, but the goal is to love yourself regardless.
Why Motivation and Self-Love are Important in any Workout Journey?
Motivation and self-love are very important in your workout journey. It drives you to take action that makes you work towards achieving your workout goals. Staying fit, losing weight, and exercising needs motivation and self-love to keep you going. Staying through to fitness goals takes motivation for consistency to stick to routines. The difference between reaching your goals and failing to reach your goal is the power of motivation. Motivation and self-love drive you to take action and engage in activities that are beneficial and also in line with achieving a consistent workout routine, which explains the importance of motivation in workouts. Motivation goes beyond just motivating yourself. There are times that you might lose the energy to motivate yourself; it is important that you surround yourself with people who can motivate you to achieve in your fitness journey when you run out of energy.
Helpful Tips to Stay Motivated in your Workout Journey
1. Set goals
To stay motivated and keep up with the habit of self-love in your workout journey, it is important that you set attainable goals. When setting your workout goals, you should start by setting simple goals and then move to set longer-range goals. For instance, if one of your workout goals is to complete an hour walk a week, you have to start small by setting a short-term goal to walk 10 minutes per day for five days a week. You can then set an intermediate goal to walk 30 minutes per day for five days and then move to a long-term goal of achieving an hour walk a week. Setting your goals means that you are breaking down your goals so that they look less ambiguous and easier to achieve.
2. Make it fun (add life to your workout)
Starting your workout routine, your level of motivation is hyper, and you feel like you can achieve it, but in the long run, you might want to give it to the point where the fun comes in. When choosing your workout activities, you should go for sports that you enjoy or find intriguing and vary the activities to keep the fun alive, allowing you to enjoy your workouts. If you love swimming and get bored with it, you can try other workout activities like joining a volleyball league, taking a dancing class, or joining a martial arts team. If you do your workout at home, you can try yoga, kickboxing, and other aerobic and high-intensity interval training.
3. Engage in physical activity as part of your daily routine
Normal physical activities can also serve as part of your workout routine. For instance, rather than taking the elevator in a mall or at work, you can take the staircase to help exercise your muscle or take a brief walk after work to a restaurant close to your office without driving your car. Walk up and down the sidelines while watching the kids play sports. Take a walk during a break at work. You can stretch your body while on the bed or cooking. Making your physical activities part of your workout routine helps you stick to your exercise goals even when you are very busy.
4. Journal your workout routine
Journaling is very important in sticking to routines. It helps you stay accountable to yourself. You should journal about your workout journey, goals, how you started, what you have achieved, and the changes you have noticed in your physical and mental health. Writing down your goals, seeing yourself achieve them, and their benefits to your body helps you stay motivated. Keeping a record of your activities, the duration of yourself, and how you felt afterward helps you appreciate your effort, keep track of your progress and stay motivated.
5. Join a gym membership or involve your family, friends, and neighbors
Your fitness journey might not be rosy to achieve, but engaging or inviting your close friends, colleagues, or families to join you in your exercise activities to avoid boredom. You can work out with your kids, spouse, neighbor, and others which can help increase your motivation
6. Reward yourself
This is an aspect that most people ignore. You should always reward yourself for every workout goal you hit. This reward can be taking yourself out on a treat, savoring the feel-good feeling that you have accomplished something, buying yourself new things, etc. Whether it’s an internal or external reward, make sure you reward yourself for every goal you hit, it helps increase your motivation to workout.
How Working Out improves Motivation and Self Love
Motivation, workout, and self-love work hand-in-hand; motivation and self-love help one stick to workout routines; likewise, a workout also helps to improve one’s motivation and self-love. Workout helps boost your self-esteem, make you feel better, keep you in shape, and improves your overall well-being. There are ways workouts can help improve motivation and self-love.
1. Improve your Mental Health
Engaging in workouts helps to improve one’s mood, relieve anxiety and depression, and helps to increase one’s sense of self. Workout helps to improve one’s mental health and alleviates low self-esteem and negative emotions.
2. Reduce Stress
Exercise is a stress reliever; whether it is aerobics, strength training, or yoga exercise, it helps make you feel calm and settled. During exercise, the body releases endorphins neurotransmitter, which makes one feel good and relieves the mind from stress.
3. Gain a Sense of Accomplishment
Completing a task or hitting a goal helps to increase one’s sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. It gives you a sense of pride after achieving a particular goal.
4. Improve Your Brain Function
Exercise helps to improve brain functions. During exercise, the brain produces a molecule called irisin, which has a neuroprotective effect that helps in activating the genes involved in memory and learning. Exercise helps to improve memory and learning by releasing irisin; it also helps feed the brain with the necessary oxygen and nutrient required for improving cognitive functioning. It helps increase your attention span, helps you stay focused and alert, helping you engage in your day-to-day activities more efficiently.
5. It helps to improve one’s Self-Image
Exercise helps keep the body fit and in shape, which helps build self-esteem and self-image. Exercise also helps build confidence by improving your body image, making you feel good about your body and yourself.
Conclusion
Motivation and self-love go a long way in achieving whatever your goal is; exercise is not left out. Exercise is an activity that is difficult for anyone to keep up with either for one reason or the other. If you feel like you have your motivational energy, you can invite friends over to join you in your exercise to achieve your fitness journey.
References
5 ways exercise can build your self-esteem