Hey everybody, Kris Stokes from Custom Fitness Personal Training Studio, where your health comes first. Today’s topic, what is your why? We talked about this a little bit before, but just kind of felt like something we needed to bring back up. So, it’s pretty common that by the time that people meet with me for a consultation that they’ve really already done the research on how to get results. They think they know what direction they need to go, that’s why they’re meeting with a training team to work on exercise, nutrition and lifestyle. Maybe they’ve been watching what their friends or family are doing and finding out that they’re following this certain plan or regimen.
However, outside of knowing what their general goals are, they typically haven’t sat down to think about why and why they’re doing it. This honestly becomes one of the most important parts. So, really what you’re doing will never be as important as why you’re doing it. If you don’t have that why established, you lose your motivation and your determination to do it because you don’t really understand why you’re doing it in the first place. In truth, it happens more often than you think. People come in to workout with us and start out by saying, “Hey, I want to lose weight.”
Dig Deeper
Wanting to lose weight is a wonderful goal. However, it’s very generalized and it’s something very common that we know that there might be something deeper. So, we start to dig deeper with those people. We find that a lot of times, they don’t actually care as much about the number on a scale as they do about the benefits that they’re going to get from the weight loss. They’re looking for weight loss because they want these extra side benefits. That could be anything from improving their health, to improving their physical appearance, to social acceptance, so on and so forth. They want those benefits, they don’t really care about the number on the scale.
Now, I’m not saying that the number on the scale’s not important. If you have an excess amount of fat within the body then we do need to change that. We’ll get into that in another post. But really, just thinking about the fact that there may be benefits outside of that number on the scale, that people are actually seeking, that’s what they’re looking for.
Motivation
When people tell me that they’ve lost their motivation, a lot of times it’s just they’ve lost sight of their why. They don’t know why they’re doing it. I can tell you that even as a fitness professional, I lose my why from time to time as well. I think having children greatly changed that for me, to where I had a different why. There for a little while, I wasn’t sure what I was doing. It was a new me, a new version of my life, and a new chapter. I wasn’t sure what to be doing. I had to work hard to find that why again and once I found it, it made a lot of sense.
So, if having energy to play with your kids, or sticking around long enough to watch them grow up, or get married, or whatever may be is your why, then your motivation just became a lot stronger, especially for moms. I find that helping them see a why outside of who they are in themselves, has actually had a super impact on their motivation levels. A lot of times we’ll talk about their why’s, looking at more of their family and the people that they love and care about, because a lot of times as a mom, that’s really where we live. We live outside of ourselves, serving and taking care of others. And if you can put that why on that, that other level, then it makes a bigger difference.
Therefore, to find your why, I know maybe that sounds great, but what on earth are you talking about? How do we do this? Well, you think about your goals and you write those down. Your goals are great, but they may be too generalized; you may have to figure out what it is, like what specifically we’re looking for. With those goals, there’s a reason why you want to reach those goals. That just makes sense! There’s a reason why you want to do it. It’s not just I want to lose weight because I want to lose weight. The second step is to ask yourself why do you have those goals and write that down. Writing it down is important. If you just sit there and say it, sometimes it’ll work, but really it helps you to dig deeper if you write it down.
Remind Yourself WHY Your Goals Are Important
And then the next step is to ask yourself why the previous step was important to you, and write that down. First, you wrote down why those goals were important to you. Now write down why they matter. And then on the next one, do the same thing three more times. Go back and ask why does that matter? And why is this … and as you ask yourself why about five times. You’ll start to really dig deeper into your psyche and find out what your true why is. Once you have that clear view of what your why is, you want to take that and you want to post it somewhere that you’re going to see it every day. Maybe on your bathroom mirror, a pop-up reminder on your phone, on your refrigerator, or at your desk at work. Whatever it may be, put it where you’re going to see it every day, and as often as you can throughout the day, so that you can use it to drive yourself and your results forward.
That way you’ve actually got your motivation sitting right there in front of you. Now, motivation is a funny thing because it feels to us like it should be something that pushes us all the time, right? And that “why” will do that. There’s still going to be days when you don’t want to do what you need to do in order to reach that. We’ve got to remember that even though our motivation will come and go, our determination because of that why, it always remains. So, be determined to move forward.
So, with your why, you’re going to find that your consistency of your health practices from exercise, nutrition and other aspects of your lifestyle, are going to be so much easier to maintain. You may even start to find that you look at those things differently than what you did before. You’ll find that things are a little bit easier, that they look different, feel different, and that maybe you have a different mindset about them altogether.
So, that why is super important. You can see how just having a how to get it done doesn’t necessarily drive as deep as having that why. So, what is your why? And as always, remember that if you would like help in a structured format, in a done with you format, where we provide you with the things that you need in order to get to your goals because of your why, then feel free to give us a call. 806-322-3188, we’d love to sit down with you and just have a consultation. To see if it’s the right fit for you and see if it’s worth going forward with.
Have a great day!