Finding motivation

It’s winter in the northern hemisphere. In the northern latitudes the days are short and often gray. We are missing sunshine and the freedom to easily go outside. This is the time of year when our motivation to workout and train tends to dip. But good news! There are ways to light a fire under that motivation. 

There is no one size fits all answer. However, all answers start with taking a step back and getting curious about what is going on. This will not be a "just get out there and do it" story. Instead, using the Body, Mind, Community framework we can explore what may be contributing to the lower motivation and then figure out how to best work with it. 

Body

Let's take a moment, if you can, close your eyes (after finishing reading this paragraph of course), take a few deep breaths and scan your body. Take a moment to just recognize what you are feeling. What do you notice? How are you feeling physically?  What is your body telling you it needs? Is there anything you can do right now to help it feel a little better? Do you need to roll your shoulders or head? Do you need to stand up and stretch?

How is your sleep? How is your nutrition and hydration? This is a great opportunity to show compassion to your body. Goodness, it works hard! You runners out there: your feet and legs take a pounding. Cyclists, those legs, lower back and yes even upper body keep us upright and grinding forward. Swimmers, take a look at your shoulders, lats and arms!! Wow! No wonder our bodies may want a bit of a break when it is gray out.  Take a moment, recognize what those parts, and others do for you day in and day out. Lifting groceries, doing the laundry, shoveling the snow, heck even just sitting at a desk, our bodies are being used all day everyday. 

Take a few moments, check in, what does your body need? More sleep? At this time of year in these northerly climates, nature is telling us to rest. Unfortunately, our society gives us the opposite message, “go go go”.. How do we work through those two conflicting messages? What else does your body need? How’s the nutrition? Are you getting enough hydration? How about fruits and vegetables? With all of the swimming, biking and running throughout the year is it at all possible your body needs a break from it? If so, what are some different activities you can do? Is this a good time to focus on strength work? How about cross country skiing, maybe a nice winter pickleball league will help to strike that motivation match. 

Mind

Let’s go back to being curious. This time, let’s explore our thoughts and our emotions. What is the inner narrator saying? What emotions are present? We are bombarded with millions of stimuli throughout the day. Our body takes it in, and our mind filters it to what do we need to pay attention to and what we can ignore. What is your mind saying about your motivation? Is it filled with “I should……” if it is then you are shoulding all of yourself. “Should” is a judgemental word. It is not motivating, forward thinking or goal directed. Let’s see if we can shift those “shoulds” to “wants”.  “I want to….” and then figure out what the obstacles are, how to reduce those and increase the likelihood of the thing happening.  So, for example, “I want to go swimming in the morning. To do this I need to wake up at 5am, and go to the pool.”  What are some of the obstacles to waking up at 5am in the winter? Off the top of my head: the bed is warm, the house is cold, it’s still dark outside, I actually have to leave the house and drive to the pool, I need all of my meals for the day to take to work. Do you have others to add to this list? What are some possible solutions to these that can be set in place the day before? For me, it starts with having things set up before going to bed for the next day. Put my swimming gear and clothes for work together. Make my food for the day and have it ready to grab out of the refrigerator. Set the house thermostat to warm up about 30 minutes before my alarm goes off. I can’t really do anything about the sun, so we may just have to suffer through a dark morning. Do you have other ideas? 

Next, let’s examine our “why”. What on earth is important enough to get me out of a warm bed to go swimming? What is this swim going to do for me? How does it get me a step closer to my goal? We may have our long term goal, like completing an open water swim event that is 6 months away. Those far away goals can be hard to motivate us. Instead let’s look at what are our smaller goals in the more immediate future? Why is this particular swim important to our desired outcome? Maybe this swim is about getting uncomfortable and working through it. Maybe this swim helps us hit a weekly or monthly distance or time goal? 

After finding some ways around the obstacles and examining our why we can set up some type of reward. I go back to the equivalent of gold stars in elementary school. For example, If I go swimming every day scheduled this week I can stop at my favorite bagel place to get a bagel with egg and cheese. What would be your reward?

Community:

When boosting our motivation we can look to our community for help. Often it’s easier to do something hard when we know we are doing it with somebody or have an accountability buddy. It’s hard to get out of bed at 5am to go somewhere alone. Knowing we are going to meet a friend or teammate makes it much easier. I don’t know about you, but I can’t always swim with my friends. It is then that I make up my community. Yes random man in the neighboring lane, you are my community on my Friday morning swims.  If you show up often enough you become one of the regulars. Believe me, people notice if you don’t show up as usual. More than once I have had people, who I don’t know,  ask where I was when I missed a day or two. 

So there it is, dealing with a lack of motivation. In summary, check in with how you are feeling physically, switch from “I should…” to “I want to…”, prepare the night before, reward yourself and be accountable to somebody else. 

I would love to hear from you. How do you find or create motivation?

Happy training. Remember to find joy, awe and wonder in the everyday.