Motivation

I’ve spoken about exercise before and how my injuries and surgeries have limited me in the past. Today though is about motivation and exercise. I struggle. In general. I don’t have any issue in letting you know that there are times when I really struggle. I was sitting in my lovely neighbour’s garden the other day and one of their friends asked if I ever get ‘work dread.’ And I was very open with this lovely person who I’d never met before. Yes, yes I do. There are times when I struggle to get out of bed to go to work. And there have been times when a snooze button has been smashed to give myself an extra ten minutes to psyche myself out of bed. But in the end I do it, because I have responsibilities.

One of the other aspects of life that I struggle with a little more than others is motivation. Motivation to exercise. I have lots of motivation to sit and play video games and watch tv or films. I admire those greatly who have the get up and go to get up and go early in the morning and get a work out in before breakfast and work. I’ve been trying to programme a short work out before work in the morning into my daily routine for a good two years now. It has not gone well. I don’t think I’ve ever met that wish for myself. It is entirely down to a lack of motivation. I’ve set everything up so I know what I’m doing, I’ve set out my equipment and workout gear for the morning and my alarm goes off and I hit snooze. Or I get up and go and do something else that’s a bit less taxing.

And the silly thing is I know how much good regular exercise does for my brain and my body. I feel better, I look better, I have more energy, I’m less wheezy… but I just lack that small spark to do it. I even lack motivation to exercise at other times of the day. At the end of a working day, I’m usually tired. Not because I’ve been physically moving all day, it’s more a tired brain. And on weekends I just feel like I’ve got better things to do than exercise. So why am I lacking motivation in front of this plethora of evidence that this is a small change I could make, to make me better and healthier. I’ve even discussed it with my therapist. I’m not sure we came to a conclusive answer. If we did, I can’t remember.

In the end, I’m hoping that if I ‘out’ myself on here and tell the world I don’t do enough exercise as I should, I’ll get my arse in gear and sort something out. Essentially I’m telling you and in turn hoping that will be my motivation because then if someone reads this and asks me and I haven’t done any exercise before work, I will have failed. And I hate to fail at things.