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I meet a senior partner from a law firm who was a keen cyclist who road 250-300km per week which included a daily commute from his house 18km from the Melbourne CBD.

Like most of us, stuff happened and what was a healthy lifestyle quickly turned into a life of long working hours, deadlines and before you know it, something has to give, well it’s your health and fitness goals.

This person was in his 50′s with his stomach girth in excess of the 100cm waist measurement for men (85cm for woman) that places him in the high risk category for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

After chatting to him, there really was the time to ride to work, to do the weekend bike rides and to lead a healthier lifestyle but it was more about the lack of motivation.

Well after our chat, he was so confident about getting back onto the bike that I gave him some home work, I would call him in a weeks time to follow up on whether he successfully got back onto the bike.
Well to his credit, he had ridden to work 3 times and enjoyed a further 2 rides on the weekend but like all good starts to achieving goals it’s a marathon not a 50m sprint so as Mr Lawyer acknowledged, its about maintaining the momentum, something which is particularly hard.

At boot camp this morning, a few of the Fitmates were expressing that that could NOT hold a wall sit for another second longer, that their legs were aching. Well any type of fitness motivation is about having the will power and belief system to keep going with an exercise and not giving up.

We spoke about the stories that you hear about people having to tread water for more than 12 hours of more. Are these super human people all is there belief system for survival that strong that they overcome the mental barriers to there physical abilities.

Yes there is the flight/fight response that automatically clicks in but the bodies realise of adrenaline and other chemicals is to get out of a dangerous situation, not continue pumping the adrenaline hormones for 14 hours.

There was a great story of a father and son who tread water in for 14 hours in Dakota Beach Florida in jelly fish and shark infested waters.

One of the rescue team members commented “They have amazing will power to be able to do it”

The point being if you truly believe in achieving an outcome, you will do everything in your power to succeed, are these people superhuman or athletes, no just a strong belief to succeed.

It’s very easy to just give up, being in complete darkness and drown.

Struggling with exercise motivation? Well try to treat your exercise session like a business appointment.

It was interesting when I was at a business seminar chatting to another business owner about there exercise regime. Out came the usual preamble about why they are not exercising regularly, too busy, not enough time……, well you may be familiar with the other adjectives.

My next line of questions was something apparently unrelated, “so you have business meetings/appointments” Yes, “When do you arrive to the meeting, late, on time or 5 – 10 minutes before?” 5 minutes before, “have you EVER been late to a meeting”, NO.

So when we say we don’t have enough time, tooooo busy etc, what are we really saying?
Well it’s about priorities and what weighting we give to any given activity in out lives.
Appointments maybe = $$$$, or making a good impression, keeping your job, keeping the boss happy, making sure you get the deal, keeping the client happy.

So back to why we don’t exercise, we need to give exercise a higher priority in our life and remove the negatives about why we cannot exercise, maybe it’s about being lazy or can’t be bothered. Once again it’s down to priority, if your Doctor said if you don’t lose 20kgs or improve your fitness you are going to die, then the priorities change and suddenly there is time to exercise.

This example is more about showing how priorities can change, so we need to prioritise our exercise and treat it like a business appointment.

“Can’t get out in time” I spoke to a business owner, lets call him Bob Brown, everytime Bob tries to get to a session somethings always comes up that stops him walking out of the door by 6pm.

I know he want’s to attend but what is really holding him back?
The analogy I used was going away on holidays.
Why is it that no matter how busy we are, we can always get all the outstanding work tasks completed before we leave the office for our holiday? If not we close the door & leave any outstanding work behind.
Because consciously/sub consciously we have a deadline, the motivation is the holiday and the belief is we will finish.

Year after year, I would work until 1-2am the day of leaving for overseas & always just finish all of my outstanding jobs on my list.
Is it just a coincidence that all the jobs I had on my list just coincidently were accomplished within my allocated time frame or did I believe that I would have everything achieved within that time.

Or did I really just give myself enough tasks knowing I had until 1-2am to finish?

If I had known that a friend was picking me up to take me to the airport at 5am, that I needed time to go home, sleep & pack before 5am, would have I fininshed all my allocated tasks by say 10pm knowing I needed at least 5 hours sleep & 2 hours to pack?
Or would I have given myself less tasks & prioritised what was really a fire & what could be finished when I returned to finish by 10pm.

Everyday we are confronted by similar situations, whether work, friends or family related that make us make decisions about we need to accomplish.

Are we really creating sub conscious barriers or creating unnecessary tasks that restrict us performing a particular activity be it spending time with the family, friends, persuing a hobbie or performing exercising or eating healthy food?