Let’s face it, for most of us long term discipline is rather difficult. We all start out with great energy and motivation but over time it often fades. This not only applies to diets and exercise routines but to most other noble ideas. The people who succeed are the ones who stick with it. The surefire road to failure is to stop your ab workouts and diet plan. In this series we will examine motivation and self discipline and how they relate to successful ab workouts, diets, and life in general.
So how can a normal person overcome this natural tendency? How can I stay motivated with my diet and exercise routines? To get the answer I would first like to look at the causes, only then can we start to implement positive and more importantly, long lasting changes. What are the causes for a fading motivation or discipline?
Most people think they are too busy for exercise or healthy eating or that other activities are more important.
There is a famous story about a professor giving a lecture that illustrates this point about priorities:
A Danish professor was lecturing to his students at the University of Copenhagen. When the lecture started, he took a large, empty jar, and filled it with stones. When the jar could not take more of the stones, he asked his students: “Now, would you say that the jar is full?” They all agreed that it was.
Now the professor took some pebbles, and poured them carefully into the jar. As he shook the jar gently, the pebbles found their way down among the stones. When the jar was filled to the rim he asked the students if the jar was full now, and they all agreed that now it was.
When the professor procured a bag of sand the students smiled, for of course the sand could find room in the cracks between stones and pebbles. The professor now filled the jar completely up with sand.
“Now,” the professor exclaimed, “you must imagine that this jar represents your life! The stones are important things in your life, such as your family, your spouse or sweetheart, children, your health – those things which mean that even if you lose everything else, your life will still be full. The pebbles represent things that are not quite as important, such as your job, your house, car, etc. And the sand is everything else in your life.”
“And now look,” the professor said, demonstrating on another jar. “If you fill up the jar with sand first, there won’t be room for stones and pebbles. This goes for your life as well, if you use all your time and energy on small insignificant things, there won’t be room for the major, important things. Always focus on what is really important for you, which will give you a good life. Play with your children, take time for exercise and physical check-ups, so that you’ll always be in good health. Go out with your spouse or sweetheart, and still there will be time for work, to do the chores, and all the other pebbles and sand. Fill your life with stones – things that really are meaningful. Make sure that stones have the priority of stones. What’s left is just sand!”
Now the professor looked at his audience, took up a bottle of beer, and carefully emptied the whole bottle into the miniscule spaces between the grains of sand, the pebbles and the stones. Then he turned to his class again: “And the moral is: No matter what happens in your life, there’s always room for a beer!”
What we need to do, is make our ab workout and healthy diet a priority. Once this is done, the rest of life’s challanges and needs will fill in the spaces.
How Can A Jar of Rocks Motivate Us?
Distractions and time wasting activities are exercise de-motivators
In this high speed internet age our minds have become conditioned to quickly jump from object to object. In short, we are easily distracted. I highly recommend we turn of the computer, turn off the tv, and set aside a little time before our daily workout to rest in relaxed awareness. The focus can simply be upon our breath or something simple.
Once we regain a little more control over the monkey mind and it’s constant state of distraction out ability to focus will naturally increase. This will make it much easier to retain positive activities in our life like our daily exercise or workout regimen.
We often think nothing of spending hours each and every evening in front of the computer or tv. But somehow we still don’t have a problem saying “I don’t have time to eat healthy or workout.” This point is related to the first point mentioned above regarding priorities. Our minds have become so distracted the we may not even realize how we subtly fool ourselves with these mind games. We may actually believe that we don’t have time for the daily ab workout.
This has been part one of the series on motivation and discipline.
