I've always struggled a small bit in finding the motivations to get my ass in the gym. I've certainly wavered over the years. I've had my ups and downs, my periods of hyper activity, and my periods of sloth-ism. The way I view the gym and working out has really evolved. For some reason, once I finally arrived at my current state of thinking about it, staying regular with it has become much more easy. As strange as this sounds, where as I used to dread going into the gym some days, today I truthfully look forward to it. I never thought I could be a guy that talked on those terms and actually meant it. If you can arrive at that sort of place, I know that it will do nothing but good things for you in your life. Wouldn't that make you feel perpetually just...better?
So I'm not going to be able to hypnotize you into thinking my way, but I just wanted to lay out a little bit of the progression about how I got to where I am at. I hope that you can take a small cue from this article and run with it, no pun intended. This was the piece I had been missing...
When I was younger, I used to just look at the gym as purely aesthetics. That's it, I just wanted to pump up my body and look amazing. I didn't care about anything else. I just wanted to look ripped. Hell, I even put all sorts of supplemental shit into my body during this time. Did not care. Just wanted the bod.
Then at some point, I shifted out of that mindset and started thinking, well now I just want to have healthy insides. I want to live a long time and avoid disease. I didn't really care as much about what I looked like from the outside and just wanted to know that my cardio vascular system was tuned up, my organs were in good order, and I had a generally good machinery running under the hood. Sadly to say, even as positive as all those thoughts were, it still didn't give me enough of a kick in the ass to keep up with regular exercise.
Well, I don't know what happened, but the light bulb really went on in my life about 1 year ago. I finally came to the realization that working out, above all else, was more about mental maintenance than anything. Brain upkeep. The control of ones mind. Stress relief. And ultimately, soul centering. The other "side effects" were FANTASTIC byproducts, but the main deal here was maintaining the mind. Perhaps the MOST important thing that we all need to be doing.
If you think about it, we can all live a fine life without being a fitness model. We can live a so-so life even with fairly decent innards. But the thing none of us can do without, is a healthy mind. We wont last long once that thing starts to go. I submit to you again, working out is more about the upkeep of ones mind than it is anything else. This is the most important thing you need to remember. One of THE BEST ways to maintain the mind is through physical exercise. If you can start to look at it in this light, you too may find the motivational piece you have been looking for to keep you exercising regularly. I sincerely hope this resonates with you.
To further this, I also want to say, don't put any pressure on yourself. You DON'T have to become the incredible hulk. You DON'T have to look like a bikini model. ALL you have to do is...well...something. Anything. Do anything you like doing. Try to do it as much as you can manage to do it. Just exert yourself in some way shape or form. Just try to break a sweat. That's it. That's all I'm saying here. This is so important for your mind. Use this as your motivation if nothing else is working. Mental maintenance. That's it.
To leave this one off, I wanted to share a small quote from an article I stumbled upon right around the time I was putting together my thoughts for this post. Seems to fall in line with some of the things that I am saying here. Maybe it will stick with you...
"Cortisol, the stress hormone, only leaves your body through sweat or tears. Don't lose it and it stays in your body in fat cells instead."
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