Our brains. They can help us think, respond, react, create, innovate, and amaze. They can also inhibit us from doing what we know we should.

Without getting too science heavy here, let’s talk about why you struggle to motivate yourself to exercise and what is stopping you so far.

I Know Exercise Is Good For Me, but I Can’t Motivate Myself to Just Do It

You have a new friend that is going to start a new fitness routine and she asked you to do it, too. You know you need it for all the right reasons. You know fitness will help you with everything else in your life; you will feel better, have more energy, get more rest, and physically, your body will be stronger and more efficient. But the time comes to go do it, and you just can’t.

Let’s review:

Motivation is BS.

Don’t wait for motivation to strike, because it won’t. Motivation is an excuse actually for NOT doing what you need to do, because you’re just “not motivated.”

Inaction will not motivate you, even with all the happy cat posters in the world. Action begets action. Inaction begets inaction. In order to be motivated to move, you gotta move.

This is an Ego Trap.

Your ego is designed to keep you “safe” by not changing and not doing anything new. That primal part of your brain fears any shift in your momentum, because…. who knows! You might get so excited that you run into oncoming traffic! I will keep you in the dark corners so no one can hurt you and you can’t hurt yourself… so ego would say.

Change is Hard

Change is uncomfortable. Change is difficult. Change makes you consider crawling in a hole and hiding. But without change, you die. Pure and simple.

So in order to change, you simply have to circumvent that resistant voice.

I know. It’s sounds much easier than it is. But just as we have discussed with the ego before, the less stage time you give him, the less he will be in the spotlight.

And, it gets easier with practice. Change isn’t a one time thing. It’s a constant. You just keep practicing. You keep saying NO to ego and YES to you. You practice until practice is your only option. You practice until the vision of who you are becoming pulls you to it. You practice until you see and feel how powerful you are.

And you keep practicing.