New Years Fitness Resolutions and Motivation
Fitness motivation and fitness resolutions! Its on everyones mind at New Years when people write their resolutions but staying motivated is a problem year round. Here are my videos to help you look at fitness motivation in a new way that can keep you working out day after day, week after week, year after year. I have been working out for over 30 years and have loved every single workout. Find out my secret … for free! Please start by reading my page on Fitness Motivation!
Every year I do a video to encourage those starting their fitness journey on January 1st. Rather than re-hash old material, this year we are going to talk about making time to workout. Many folks workout every day in January but by February, they get busy and go to the gym less and less until they just give up and start again the next January. In this video, I will give you a lot of ideas how you can make time for the important and enjoyable activity of working out.
First though, let me summarize all of these other new years reslution videos in 7 seconds. About half of folks fail at their new years resolutions because they are either not specific enough or they are completely unrealistic. Use this calculator to see what is a realistic rate of weight loss. Use this calculator to see what is a realistic rate of muscle gain. If you want bodybuilding motivation then watch this. You can also watch all my previous years New Years Resolution videos below.
People often confuse “want to” with “have to” and confuse “can’t” with “don’t want to”. To be successful, you need to be brutally honest with yourself.
Scooby Werkstatt
Making time to workout
The other half of people fail at their new years fitness resolutions because they run out of time and “cant” workout. Here I am going to suggest a way you can find the time to workout. We often end up doing things not because we made a conscious decision to do them but rather because we have always done them or our parents have always done them – a ritual. Some rituals are good, like flossing your teeth but some rituals are bad. Rituals become bad when they become so many that we don’t have time to do anything really important in life. The older you get, the more rituals you pick up. If you are not really, really careful, your rituals consume you and you end up “busy” all day but accomplish absolutely nothing! In life its very easy to get stuck in a rut.
Now please, turn off your defensive reaction here. If I’m going to help you here you need to look at your own habits with an impartial eye and separate things you “HAVE” to do from things you “WANT” to do. Very few things we have to do. You have to do two kinds of things:
- things to keep us alive and healthy
- things to keep us out of jail
Everything else is something we WANT to do, not something we HAVE TO do. On each of these activities, ask yourself if you HAVE TO or WANT TO:
- reading all your emails and answering all your facebook messages
- take a luxurious 20 minute hot shower
- spend 10 minutes blow drying and styling your hair
- spend 30 minutes reading the paper
- stopping at starbucks for coffee on the way to work
- spend 30 minutes checking in on Facebook and commenting on peoples posts
- spending an hour watching TV relaxing after work
- washing all the sheets on Saturday morning
- cleaning the house on saturday afternoon
- washing the windows the first of every month
Its easy to rationalize why you “have to” do any of the above, but all you are doing is making excuses for something you *want* to do. Its also easy to discount the impact of a ritual by waving it off with a “its just 5 minutes”. Well, all those little 5 minutes add up! Lets take a look at one ritual, a lot of people stop at Starbucks for a cup of coffee on the way to work when they could brew a cup at home – clearly a WANT TO and not a HAVE TO but its “only 5min” NO. Start your stopwatch when you turn off the freeway and stop it when you get back on – my guess is that its 20 minutes for that cup of coffee. By the time you wait for a few lights, park, and wait in the permanently long coffee line, fix your coffee and get back on – its 20 minutes, not 5. So what you say, its just 20 minutes. Well, if you don’t have time to workout I could give you a great 20 minute workout you could do at home. Its not just 20 min, its your workout time for the day!
The point is, every minute of every day, ask yourself the following:
IS THIS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I CAN BE DOING RIGHT NOW?
I know its easy to put off those important, unpleasant things and do the easy things but resist the temptation! Important things first, unimportant things get done only after the unimportant ones are done. I know its hard to do this because its a skill that isnt taught in school. Its why I made a three part time management class on YouTube because I think its so important. A successful life is a series of very small, seemingly insignificant, good decisions that add up over the long haul to be positively life changing.
The most important decision is the next one you will make.
Happy 2015!
