In the spirit of all things quarantine, I’m resharing this training I wrote a while back. It was written in the context of what “normal” used to look like, but the three main points are still the same. Struggling with motivation at home with uncertainty everywhere? START HERE.
When I unlocked my own personal motivation, it wasn’t easy from day one. It took patience and practice. So let’s make a deal. If you take nothing else away from this, take this: promise yourself you’ll read this all the way to the end and try what I teach for one week. Just one week. . You’ll either notice a shift in your motivation or you’ll be right back where you are right now. You have nothing to lose. Deal? Deal!
The 3 things I will teach you today are the most important and what I always come back to with the athletes I coach. I’ve done all of these steps, I live these steps and my most successful athletes live these steps every day too.
What I will teach you is not hard, but it requires that you show up for yourself. When I put in the work to qualify for Kona, these steps were the foundation of everything. I could not put in the physical training without first doing these 3 things.
Alright the first thing is:
PLAN AND FOLLOW THROUGH
But when I say plan, I do not mean simply open your Training Peaks or read the training plan you’re following. I mean take an active role in planning the upcoming week. Whether you write your own training plan, have a coach guiding you, or you’re following a book, decide ahead of time what and for how long you will train each day and put it in your calendar accordingly. This step is so important and easily overlooked. Plan and commit. Remember that your future self will be following this plan so don’t make it unrealistic and a big stretch to get it done. We want to set your future self up for success so, for example, if you have a late work function, schedule the next morning training session with that in mind.
Part two of this is the follow-through piece. Plan, commit and follow through. This might be the most important thing! Motivation follows momentum. Momentum comes from making a lot of small efforts. We have to get in the habit of doing what we said we would do, when we said we would do it. Period. There is no short cut. I tried really hard to find the short cut to this step and there just isn’t one. Building trust and integrity with yourself is a practice and that practice has to happen every day. When you follow through consistently, you start to see yourself as someone who shows up for themselves and this opens the door for some major shifts. I see it with my athletes all the time! The ones that really own this, create the motivation and results they want.
The second thing is:
CELEBRATE THE WINS AND SKIP THE DRAMA OF THE LOSSES
When you follow through on what you planned, celebrate it. Even if it was only half of the original planned swim! That’s enough to celebrate. Even if the first half of the day went well, but the afternoon/ evening went out the window. Celebrate the part that went as planned. The small wins matter just as much as the big wins. The more you celebrate, the more you start to crave that feeling and you’ll find yourself following through more just to show yourself that you can.
On the flip side, if a training session or a whole day don’t go according to plan, assess why, skip the drama and move on. I used to be someone who would miss a training session and get really down on myself about it. I let it mean that my whole week was blown or that I definitely couldn’t reach my goals now. I didn’t realize that this negative self-talk was blocking my ability to move forward. This is a sneaky place for self- doubt to grow. I was wasting time judging myself instead of asking why it happened in the first place. There’s always an underlying reason we can learn from and it’s important to uncover this especially if it has the potential to have the same effect again. Take the time to assess without the drama. Because drama comes from self-judgement. Breathe, assess, and move on.
The third thing I want to teach you is my absolute favorite thing. Are you ready?
STOP TELLING YOURSELF THAT IT’S HARD
And by “it” I mean whatever you want to be motivated for: swimbikerun training, meal prep, cleaning your house, having the tough conversation, literally anything. When you tell yourself it’s hard, you block your ability to be motivated. When you tell yourself it’s hard, your brain goes to work to prove that true. And if you’re not motivated to start, you’re far less likely to be motivated if it’s hard. If hard isn’t an option, what else could it be? A worthwhile challenge? An opportunity for self- discovery? Brainstorm 10 other more purposeful ways to think about it and go with one of those instead.
When I started to put these 3 things into practice, I noticed the momentum continue to build. I felt more motivated, even just slightly and that made me want to make other small changes to continue to feel the positive effects. This is the best place to be because you’re eager for more. I started to look forward to what I could do and what I could achieve, not sitting around beating myself up for wasting more time or procrastinating again. And when I did more then I got more motivated and the cycle flipped in my favor.
These three things that I’ve taught you are so simple, right? The only thing that gets in our way is what we think it has to be: we think it has to be hard, it has to be complicated or it has to be difficult in order to work. But it doesn’t have to be. These are the three basic things that I put into practice to qualify for Kona. I have taught several athletes how to put these into practice to get motivated to achieve what they want.
I want you to keeping planning following through for yourself, I want you to celebrate your wins and skip the drama of the losses and decide that it’s not hard. It’s exactly the challenge you need to get where you want to be. That’s it. That’s what it’s going to take.
And with that you made it, all the way to the end. Remember the deal: try this for one week because you have nothing to lose.
