Here are some exercises in preparing yourself mentally for fitness and exercise. These tips are designed to help you overcome the hurdles of sticking to an exercise program. These three tips are more to do with the psychology of exercise and fitness than actual exercise. Trust me though, when you take these tips to heart and use them to help promote your own fitness and exercise program – they will help improve your personal success.
- Understand how fitness and exercise benefits you personally
- Perfection is not the goal, satisfaction is
- This isn’t a contest, a personal win is quantified only by yourself
So let’s talk about putting these mental preparation tips to work for you.
Fitness & Exercise Benefits for You
Yes, there are dozens of studies out there that tell you that exercise is good for you if you are underweight, overweight or middle weight. There are lots of articles out there that tell you how exercise can reduce your stress. There are lots of articles out there telling you what exercise and fitness are good for. That’s great. You need to decide what benefits you are going to get from it – you need to discover for yourself how great you can feel or how much weight you can lose or how easy it is to manage your stress and to improve your self-esteem. The only person who can answer that for you is you.
Perfection is not a Goal
Perfection is such a joke and it’s patently false, anyway. There is no such thing as perfect. Even the most perfect of diamonds in the world have their flaws. I guarantee you that perfect body and perfect lives of the movie stars and the rich and the famous are not that perfect. Stop looking at yourself and your program in comparison to others. What you want is to feel great, to look great and to enjoy life. The rest of that is just so much detritus littering the side of the road on your path to personal satisfaction.
What’s a Personal Win for you?
This is another question that no one but you can answer. You have to decide what is a personal win and what isn’t. When I first started working out on a regular basis, just matching my workout schedule was a win. Pushing for one extra set or one extra mile became a win. Trimming up and building endurance and discovering how great I felt – that was a win.
You are the only one who can answer what is a win for you. So – what is a win?
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