How to Fall In Love With Working Out (Again)

I've always been working out in some capacity, but there have been times when I've taken my foot off the pedal.

I've gone between "training" and "just working out."

"Training" means hunting for a goal, whether that means hitting some sort of consistency each week, weight loss, numbers on the barbell or a future competition.

"Just working out" means you show up and you do some exercise, with no regard for how you'll perform the next day. It's a great starting point for everyone, but it can always get better. Without structure, where are you going?

Our brains eventually crave more. That's not a bad thing, it's just how we're wired. If you played a video game on the easiest difficulty and beat it, would you just keep playing that same game over and over? Wouldn't you want to increase the difficulty or switch to another game or start playing competitively?

When I was in "just show up and do enough" mode, my love of training started to fall off. I didn't have strong reasons, so it made it easy to drop days since each day wasn't connected to a major goal anyway.

We all want to be more consistent. We see others that love the process, but we talk ourselves out of it and think that we can't have the same mindset. Is there a way that we can?

Yes, but it doesn't take some magical words to convince yourself.

You have to take action first.

The Upward Spiral

I've recently gotten back into serious training with my own lifting. That means I'm not just working out for the sake of it (although that's good too). I've written goals, have milestones along the way and put the pressure on myself to hit numbers.

The love for the game is coming back.

Seeing the progress has always made me feel good. It's been the same since doing pushups in my room and seeing my reps go up, or lifting in high school, or college and eventually competing in weightlifting.

But why? How does that happen? It's because you put the energy in first.

We think that people that like to train are crazy. Working out isn't a joyous occasion. It requires some level of suffering. It's unavoidable.

But the other side of that action is pure motivation.

Picture this - we think we have to love the action first, then show up. This is hard to replicate since our primal brains want to avoid things that seem like effort. It just wants the quickest path to feeling good/dopamine, and sweating and doing hard things is not that, especially compared to modern comforts (which are all too easy to access).

When you show up regardless of how you feel, you feel good afterwards. It's magic.

A few days, weeks or even months of progress and you'll love that you've made it so far and you start to love it even more.

What's the lesson here?

THE ACTION COMES FIRST.

This isn't going to be some inspirational speech, nor do you have to fire one up on YouTube each time you head to the gym, because that assumes you need to get hyped, to convince yourself that you love it, before you do the action and eventually love it anyway.

You have to do the action (while making it easy if you're in a rut or just getting started), stick with it long enough to see progress, THEN the love will start to kick in. It's the example of delayed gratification. Action first, good feelings later. (Sadly our brains are bombarded with the opposite: immediate gratification - feel good now, but feel bad later.)

This holds true for any area of life that takes a little effort, even things that seem like fun. If you play an instrument, there was a time when you were bad. Actually, you were beyond bad because you couldn't even play in the first place. But you had to show up, practice little by little and learn easy songs until the easy stuff became automatic and you can finally "play" the guitar instead of "work" the guitar.

This is even more true in video games. It's a grind. It's challenging. You have no clue what you're doing. But you start small, progress to harder stuff, eventually compete with others and THEN you love it.

Games have small wins.

So give yourself small wins.

The "I Love Working Out So Much That I Can't Stop" Blueprint

I couldn't come up with a better title, so I threw in everything.

This is for anyone that's just getting started or in a rut. You're going to have to put in work first, but I guarantee that if you stick with it, you'll see good progress.

Step 1: Have a goal.

• Make is something that inspires you and even scares you a little bit. Even if it's a vague idea, it's better than nothing.

• If you're really stuck, write down what you don't like about yourself right now and write down the opposite.

Step 2: Set Yourself Up

• You might need to join a gym. Or you might need to set up a home gym. Or you might need to start with a bodyweight only routine. Whatever you pick, make it easy.

• To stop talking yourself out of it, start going to bed early, wake up early and workout early in the morning.

Step 3: Workout

• It doesn't matter if it's a few pushups and walking. Start with what you know instead of worrying about the perfect routine.

• Make it so simple that it's impossible to resist.

Step 4: Feel Good

• Now that you've taken the first step, you should feel good. Well done.

• This happens for two reasons: you get the physical feel good hormones from working out. You also get the confidence that you did something hard and won the day. You did what you said you wanted to do, no matter how hard or easy it was.

Step 5: Repeat Forever

• Repeat this often enough and you'll start feel so good consistently that you can't stop.

Get Addicted to Love

If you made it this far looking for a solution, you're probably in a bad motivational cycle.

You don't want to do it.

You think it's going to be hard.

You don't show up.

Then you engage in some activities seeking fun, but make you feel worse.

You're going to have to break this cycle with the mindset shift.

You don't have to love doing it to start, you have to start to love doing it. That's the truth. That's real motivation. Again, no one in their right mind knows that getting under a heavy squat for a few sets is going to be some joyous occasion like you're playing video games with your friends.

I think the trap that motivational speeches and videos put us in is that you have to be in this ultra-excited, feel good state before you do any action. I'm here to tell you that there will be a ton of days where you don't want to show up. Does that mean you don't show up? Absolutely not. That just means the commonly believed idea of "motivation" is that you're in this happy state first.

That state isn't always there.

Learn to act without it.

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