We are naturally disposed towards maintaining the status quo and living lives centred around routines. This is good and bad. Good if this helps us to lead the type of life we want to live (e.g. by helping us to concentrate on more important things) but bad if it prevents the same.

Transforming your life can only be achieved by changing the status quo and developing new routines. Most people will only do this when they perceive more pros than cons (or more pleasure than pain). Motivation comes from a positive balance in favor of carefully thought through achievable and desirable pros !

Taking exercise as an example. To overcome a lack of motivation, first you need to understand the positive benefits of exercise and these include:

• Improving your body shape (e.g. lose weight or tone up)
• Relieving or curing current health problems (e.g. lowering blood pressure, improving circulation, strengthening back muscles).
• Reducing the risk of future problems (e.g. diabetes, heart disease, many types of cancer).
• Reversing the symptoms of aging (e.g. reducing cellulite, general body toning, reduce aches and pains, improve balance and coordination).
• Enhancing your mood and self esteem.
• Improving you ability to do daily activities.
• Improving your leisure activity performance (e.g. golf and even your sex life).

Using this information you can then think about what exercise might do for you in terms of real day to day benefits such as, have more energy to play with the kids, be able to look my best at Mary’s wedding, or avoid developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease like my father. It is worthwhile spending some time on this because it is your underlying reason or motivation for making changes.

When you have identified what exercise benefits are important to you and linked these to daily benefits you are ready to create an exercise objective to deliver the benefits. An example of an objective is ” I want to achieve a weight of 70Kg before the end of the year and maintain this to avoid developing diabetes like my mother “. There is a clear target, timeline and underlying emotional purpose.

Pin up your objective in your home where you can view it every day and spend a few minutes each week visualizing how it will be when you achieve it. Create an imaginary short color film, listen to how your friends complement you and encourage your emotional reaction. The more vivid, the more real and the stronger the emotional reaction the better !

The second step is to convert your objective into achievable and measurable steps (goals). For example, you might decide to lose 5Kg after 1 month and 10Kg after 2 months. It is helpful to make a small planning chart with your goals set against a timeline of dates so that you can see where you are relative to each of the key dates.

The third step is to prioritize and schedule a period of time each week (at least twice) to exercise and get started ! As you reach each key date you simply weigh yourself, decide if you are making enough progress and if not, change your exercise schedule (e.g. do more exercise) or lifestyle (e.g. increase you intake of healthy foods) to make more progress.

If you still find that it is difficult to maintain your motivation you can rethink your objective and/or consider how you can develop a more positive attitude. The latter will allow you to focus your energy on achieving and not failing !

Over time you need to update your objectives and goals. Eventually, you will not need to do any of the above because exercise will have become one of your routines just like brushing your teeth!