A Quest for Motivation
By: Sensa Intern, Danielle Brosh
This year my New Year’s resolution was to get in to shape. I was excited and positive about my potential life change. After fully recovering from my night of celebration I, like countless Americans, joined the gym. I looked at all of the other people joining on January 2nd and said to myself, I’m different. I was in this for the long haul. This wasn’t going to be some 1 month fad; this was my first step toward improving my health and fitness, my weight loss motivation.
Fast forward 6 months and I am looking at my bank statement wondering why there is 50 dollars less than the previous day. Oh right, the gym. After about three weeks of dedication and the occasional elliptical session here and there, I fell off the bandwagon back in to my lazy inactive ways. Now the gym has become nothing more than my monthly charity to which I contribute 50 dollars each month. I thought to myself, if I’m going to be donating 600 dollars a year to something, someone better be working on a cure for Cancer.
I needed to come up with some new ways to get me back to the gym and to be excited about going. The first thing I needed to do was assess what was holding me back. Was I too busy? Was it too hard? No, the problem was simple. I just couldn’t motivate myself to get there. So, I came up with some tips that have motivated me for the past month to get off my butt and go work out.
- Put out clothes the night before—I found that having my entire outfit down to my socks and iPod ready for the next morning force me to get dressed and go.
- Change it up— I don’t do the same thing every day. For instance, on Mondays I do cardio, Wednesday is yoga, Thursday is spinning and Saturday I do weight training. Adding some variation keeps things exciting and helps me to look forward to certain workouts.
- Tell someone about your plan to work out—my mom is a health nut, so every night I call her and we talk about what I’m going to do the next day. It is inevitable that she is going to check up and ask how my workout went so I am sure to go to the gym just to avoid the shame and embarrassment of a failed attempt.
- If all else fails I Remind myself how good and accomplished I feel after a workout…and how guilty I feel when I don’t go. It’s a daily reminder to stay focused!
I have been using these tricks over the past month to be sure that I get out the door and working on my fitness. These three simple guidelines have changed my attitude toward the gym and get me excited about working out. Hopefully these new techniques will allow my 2011 resolution to be pushing my already existing fitness plan harder, rather than starting over from zero again.








































