Understand The Phases Of Motivation To Achieve Your Long Term Health & Fitness Goals

Always looking for Motivation? What you actually need is to find a way to be adherent long enough that your actions become habitual or your passion.

Adherence is broken into 6 Phases.

Understanding each one can really help with adherence to a goal whether it’s nutrition, training or both.

Inspiration

What made you want to start in the first place? What inspired you? Inspiration can get you started but it’s not good for sustainable adherence. Ever found yourself super inspired after seeing something online? How long did that last, a day, a week? It often won’t keep you going long enough to achieve a long-term goal.

Motivation

This is your inner desire to achieve your goals. This phase can fuel your day-to-day adherence when your inspiration has waned. However, it waxes and wanes, daily, weekly, monthly. Ever started to work out and after a week you are struggling to stay motivated? It can’t sustain you for the long term and this is why we want a clear end goal.

You will feel more motivated when you start to see positive results from your efforts so you need to stay the course to keep getting that positive reinforcement.

Intention

This is your commitment to execute a PLAN. It’s not just a goal now it’s a plan of “what to do”. My goal is to build as much muscle as possible, but I INTEND to fuel myself properly and do my workouts 4-5 times per week.

You’ve set out your “what to do” instructions, you are motivated, but your intention is HOW YOU ACHIEVE IT. Without intentions, goals are just wishes. You still have to be accountable and do the work.

Have a clear plan but be flexible (that doesn’t mean always letting yourself off the hook!) have a coach or a friend to keep you accountable and make sure the plan is realistic.

Discipline

Using willpower can help you meet your intentions, when motivation is low. Building your discipline will close the gaps between motivation and intention on your “tough days” so that adherence overall is good, and you are succeeding. This is not a sustainable strategy! Willpower runs out quickly and you need to recharge it regularly. Motivation will have to be CLOSE enough to intention for discipline to repeatedly bridge the gaps using willpower.

There will be tough times achieving any goal, do not be surprised by this! Your coach and your support network are crucial when willpower starts to drop.

You will need to be persistent in using willpower and also recharging it to be stronger next time things get tough (there will be a next time!).

Habit

The automation of your actions so that motivation waxes and wanes a lot less the longer you do them. Now you require less discipline, you need less willpower and your ability to adhere increases. Once your actions are habits, success will “SKYROCKET”, getting to this stage is critical, now your adherence will be for the long term.

Habit does not give you an initial spark or make you fall in love with the process necessarily.

Keep your workouts very similar week to week and keep your nutrition timing similar day to day.

With time executing the actions (4-6 weeks) towards your goals it will become more habitual and easier. As a coach it is always my goal to get my clients to this stage.

Passion

The act of being in love with the processes to achieving your goals. Passion will fuel your adherence to insane levels, leading to EASY and fun healthy habits for the rest of your life and you will have the ability to work harder than ever and achieve well above average results.

It takes longer than a few weeks to get here, it takes months and years. You can inspire people in minutes, but you can’t MAKE them passionate in weeks. There is no guarantee you will get to the stage of Passion.

At this stage you can allow your success to go to your head and feel incredibly proud of who you have become! Surround yourself with other like-minded, positive people who have passion for the things you do. Take breaks when you need to and never let your passion feel so TERRIBLE you are suffering. Have fun with your training and nutrition, try new recipes and exercises/workouts, now it’s a part of who you are you can really play around with new ideas.

Passion can last forever but it takes a long time to earn and not everyone gets there. Building habit is more than good enough for most people x