Thinking about Motivation

  Motivation? I could use some. 

The will to exercise is not automatic

When we all know how great we feel after exercise, but how come we don’t look forward to it, as much as looking forward to a chocolate?

The answer comes from David Leiberman’s book “Exercised”.  There are physiological reasons.  The answer lies in our caveman ancestry.  We evolved not wanting to waste energy.  Our energy was a precious resource so we try to conserve it – we need it to find food and to ‘reproduce’.  The rest of the time our ancestors saved their energy and rested.

Whereas modern humans have energy (and calories} to spare.  We have access to a lot of spare calories in our readily-available food and let's face it, life is physically quite easy.  (When was the last time you got up to change the channel?)

Instead, we need to be smart about it.  Our knowledge of the workings of the human body is helpful here.  We know that dopamine is the reward hormone and that even the thought of that chocolate or the holiday can get our dopamine levels to move upward.  The anticipation of the chocolate is, itself, fun.  However, the dopamine pathway is different for an exercise.  There is no reward in the anticipation phase, but instead, we get the reward after we have finished. There are so many benefits from just one session of exercise – improved circulation; less pain; clearer head; less stress; more flexibility.  I could go on and on. 

There is not necessarily any joy in a ten km walk, we might even dread the thought.  However, because we know the benefits, we need to encourage ourselves to do our exercise. Maybe figure out a reward for exercise.

Let me know what you think.  How do you motivate yourself?