• |
Consistency is the most important part of conditioning and fitness. |
• |
Motivation is the most important factor in being consistent. |
• |
You can gain control over your motivation—every day. |
The choice is yours. You can take control over your attitude, or you can let yourself be swayed by outside factors that will leave you on a motivational roller coaster: fired up one day, with no desire the next. Getting motivated on a given day can sometimes be as simple as saying a few key words and taking a walk. But staying motivated usually requires a strategy or motivational training program. To understand the process, we must first look inside your head.
A disconnection between the left brain and the right brain
The brain has two hemispheres that are separated and don’t interconnect. The logical left brain conducts our business activities, trying to steer us into pleasure and away from discomfort. The creative and intuitive right side is an unlimited source of solutions to problems and connections to hidden strengths.
Stress activates the negative left brain. As we accumulate stress, the left brain sends us a stream of logical messages that tell us “slow down”, “stop and you’ll feel better”, “this isn’t your day” and even philosophical messages like “why are you doing this”. We are all capable of staying on track, and maintaining motivation even when the left brain is saying these things.
Take control through mental drills. The first important step in taking command over motivation is to ignore the left brain unless there is a legitimate reason of health or safety (very rare). You can deal with the left brain, through a series of mental training drills. These drills allow the right side of the brain to work on solutions to the problems you are having. As the negative messages spew out of the left brain, the right brain doesn’t argue. By using the information below, you can prepare for the challenges ahead, while empowering yourself to deal with the problems and to become mentally tough. But even more important, you will have three strategies for success.
Drill #1
Rehearsing success
Getting out the door after a hard day
By rehearsing yourself through a motivation problem, you help yourself to become more consistent, which sets the stage for improvement. You must first have a goal that is do-able, and a rehearsal situation that is realistic. Let’s learn by doing:
| 1. | State your desired outcome: To be walking and running from my house after a hard day. |
| 2. | Detail the challenges: Low blood sugar and fatigue, a stream of negative messages, need to get the evening meal ready to be cooked, overwhelming desire to feel relaxed. |
| 3. | Break up the challenge into a series of actions, which lead you through the mental barriers, no one of which is challenging to the left brain. |
| 1. | Rehearse the situation over and over, fine-tuning it so that it becomes integrated into the way you think and act. |
| 2. | Finish by mentally enjoying the good feelings experienced with the desired outcome. You have felt the good attitude, the vitality, the glow from a good run-walk, and you are truly relaxed. So revisit these positive feelings at the end of each rehearsal. |
Getting out the door early in the morning
The second most common motivational problem that I’m asked about relates to the comfort of the bed, when you awaken knowing that it is time for exercise.
State your desired outcome: To be walking and running away from the house early in the morning
Detail the challenges: Desire to lie in bed, no desire to exert yourself so early. The stress of the alarm clock, and having to think about what to do next when the brain isn’t working very fast.
Break up the challenge into a series of actions, which lead you through the mental barriers, no one of which is challenging to the left brain.
| • | The night before, lay out your running clothes and shoes, near your coffee pot, so that you don’t have to think. |
| • | Set your alarm, and say to yourself over and over: alarm off, feet on the floor, to the coffee pot” or....”alarm, floor, coffee” As you repeat this, you visualize doing each action without thinking. By repeating it, you lull yourself to sleep. You have also been programming yourself for action in the morning. |
| • | The alarm goes off. You shut it off, put feet on the floor, and head to the coffee pot—all without thinking. |
| • | You’re putting on one piece of clothing at a time, sipping coffee, never thinking about exercise. |
| • | With coffee cup in hand, you walk out the door to see what the weather is like. |
| • | Sipping coffee, you walk to edge of your block or property to see what the neighbors are doing. |
| • | Putting coffee down, cross the street—you’ve made the break! |
| • | The endorphins are kicking in, you feel good, you want to continue |
Rehearsals become patterns of behavior more easily if you don’t think but just move from one action to the next. The power of the rehearsal is that you have formatted your brain for a series of actions so that you don’t have to think as you move from one action to the next. As you repeat the pattern, revising it for real life, you become what you want to be. You are successful!
Drill #2
Magic words
Even the most motivated person has sections during a tough exercise session when they want to quit. By using a successful brainwashing technique, you can pull yourself through these negative thoughts, and feel so good at the end. On these days you have not only reached the finish line—you’ve overcome challenges to get there. Here’s how it works.
Each of us have characteristic problems that reoccur. These are the ones that we can also expect to bother us in the future. Go back in your memory bank and pull out instances when you started to lose motivation due to these, but finished and overcame the challenge.
Relax…….Power…….Glide
In really tough runs, I have three such challenges: 1) I become tense when I get really tired, worried that I will struggle badly at the end. 2) I feel the loss of the bounce and strength I had at the beginning, and worry that there will be no strength at the end. 3) My form starts to get ragged and I worry about further deterioration of muscles and tendons and more fatigue due to “wobbling”.
Over the past three decades I have learned to counter these three problems with the magic words “Relax...Power....Glide”. The visualization of each of these positives helps a little. The real magic comes from the association I have made with hundreds of situations when I started to “lose it” in one of the three areas, but overcame the problems. Each time I overcome one or more of the problems, I associate the experience with these magic words and add to the magic.
Now, when something starts to go wrong, I repeat the three words, over and over. Instead of increasing my anxiety, I get calm. Even though I don’t feel as strong at 5 miles as I did in the first one, I’m empowered just by knowing that I can draw upon my past experience. And when my legs lose the efficient path and bounce, I make adjustments and keep going.
I believe that when I say magic words that are associated with successful experience, there are two positive effects. Saying the words floods the brain with positive memories. For a while, the negative messages of the left brain don’t have a chance and you can get down the road a mile or two. But the second effect may be more powerful. The words directly link you to the right brain, which works intuitively to make the same connections that allowed you solve the problems and get on to success that day.
To be successful, you only need to finish the walk-run. Most of the time you can get through the “bad parts” by not giving up, and simply put one foot in front of the other. As you push beyond the negative left brain messages you develop confidence to do this again, and again. Feel free to use my magic words, or develop your own.
Drill # 3
Dirty tricks
The strategy of the rehearsal drill will get you focused, organized, while reducing stress for the first few miles. Magic words will pull you along through most of the rest of the challenging sessions. But on the really rough days, it helps to have some dirty tricks to play on the left side of the brain.
These are quick fixes that distract the left brain for a while, allowing you to get down the road for a half mile or so. These imaginative and sometimes crazy images don’t have to have any logic behind them. But when you counter a left brain message with a creative idea, you have a window of opportunity to get closer to the end of the run.
The giant invisible rubber band
When I get tired on long or hard runs, I unpack this secret weapon, and throw it around someone ahead of me. For a while, the person doesn’t realize that he or she has been “looped” and continues to push onward while I get the benefit of being pulled along. After a while of getting into this image, I have to laugh at myself for believing in such an absurd notion. But laughing activates the creative right side of the brain. This usually generates several more entertaining ideas, especially when you do this on a regular basis.
The right brain has millions of dirty tricks. Once you activate it, you’re likely to experience its solutions to problems you are currently having. It can entertain you as you get another 400-800 yards closer to your finish.
For many more dirty tricks and mental strategies, see Galloway’s Book on Running (2nd Edition) and Marathon—You Can Do It.