by Antonio Sini …
It can only happen if you ask yourself the honest questions. What do I mean by that? Well, as a fitness professional working with people on their personal health, one of my challenges is to help each client find out what they really want to achieve, and then implement effective ways to bring out the changes they desire. Creating a safe and effective exercise program is actually relatively “easy.” The harder part is actually identifying everyone’s underlying motives for positive change. If those motives are not uncovered, then the exercise program is often ineffective. This leads to frustration, temporary failure, and often a regression back to poor health habits.
What if we all took a look at what we value at the start of an exercise program, rather than simply looking at what specific exercises you want to do. Discovering the value that you place on your health, and how your entire being will benefit, has a far more lasting impact than just going through the motions of exercise.
Here is an example of what I mean: Let’s say you’ve just purchased a gym membership. How would you take advantage of it? Some typical answers are: “I would start exercising with a trainer”; “I’d take classes to get in shape” and so on. However, what would your answer be if we turn that question around: How does it feel to have a gym membership and exercise regularly? The answers here would be very different: “Happy”; “Less stressed after I work out”; “I feel so much more energetic.”
The first answer tells me what actions you would take with the gym membership. The second reveals more of what you value in your life – a stress free environment, happiness, feeling less fatigued. So in finding out what you value, your actions which follow have a far more significant impact on the changes that you wish to make. That’s really how you really stay motivated to succeed and how you truly change.
