Lets start our basic health and fitness series with the question. How to develop the discipline and motivation for your health and fitness goals?
Welcome to Kaa-Yaa! We believe that when it comes to fitness, there is a lot of information out there. Unfortunately most of it is quite unorganized. It is the aim of this channel to organize it and present it in the form of a series of video lessons. Subscribe to our channel to get a video lesson every Sunday.
In the basic health and fitness series we mostly focus on the fundamentals. As we progress, more advanced techniques will be covered. In between we will also upload sample workouts one can perform at home or in the gym.
Coming back to our question, why most of us fail in achieving our health and fitness goals and what can we do to stay disciplined and motivated.
All of us have reasons for why we fail to workout. Reasons such as - Busy Schedule - No money for the equipment - Injury and the list can go on and on
However, these are not the true reasons for our failure. Fundamentally speaking a strong desire to achieve our goal is a core requirement for success. Most of us fail because we never want it badly enough. Many of the extremely fit people have same limitations as us, however these limitations didn’t stop them from achieving their goal. If we want something badly enough we find ways to overcome our limitations. So, the very first thing we need to stay motivated is to want it badly so that we make it a priority and go through all the hardships needed.
All the strong desire to achieve a goal however is useless if we are not convinced that we can achieve it. Without such a conviction, in our subconscious mind we will always expect to fail and hence will give up before giving our 100%. So lets believe in ourselves and be convinced that now matter the odds, in time we will succeed. Everybody, even the best of the best, starts out as a beginner; if they can do it we can too.
The third and final thing we must realize is that, it is going to be hard and we are not going to succeed overnight. Getting fit is not something that we do once and then forget. It is a lifestyle and must be turned into a habit.
Studies have shown that we develop habits through a loop of cue, action and reward. We get cues from our surroundings and perform an action, which gives us a reward. Later the anticipation of the reward acts as a cue for us to redo the action. We get our reward again and the loop keeps going. In time our body gets so used to this loop and we develop a habit. This is how we develop addictions such as smoking or drugs. However, we can also develop good habits such as exercising using the same approach.
Realizing that we are unfit can act as a cue to perform the action of exercising. Exercising releases happy chemical in our brain, such as endorphins during exercise and dopamine afterwards when we get that feeling of achievement. This acts as our reward. Now anticipation of this reward acts as cue and we exercise again, which releases happy chemicals in our brain and the loop continues. Once we repeat this loop a number of times, our body gets used to it. At that point if we stop working out, our body longs for the happy chemicals and we crave to exercise. This is the stage where exercising has become a habit and we now cannot live without exercising.
The only obstacle in developing such a habit is to repeat this loop a number of times. This is where goals come in. Setting up an ambitious goal and striving to achieve it helps in overcoming this obstacle in two ways: 1. In the process of achieving our goal we will repeat our habit loop enough times that our body gets used to it. 2. By striving for a goal we strengthen our reward system of achieving goals.
Goal formation is very important in achieving anything in life and that is why for next Sunday, we will go over the whole process of how to set fitness goals to stay motivated. We will talk about the case of Alan and Dave, who both wanted to get fit for their wedding. They had same resources however due to the difference in the way they set their goals one of them succeeded while the other failed.
We close this video with one last statement that fitness not only makes us strong physically but also mentally. It is a great way of building character. It needs strict discipline, consistent hard work and great self-control, all prerequisites for building a great character. The best feelings in life come from working hard for a goal and then achieving it and fitness provides us that at every step of our journey towards a fit life.
