If you like doing something, does it really take dedication? If you like ice cream, would it be hard for you to have four bowls of ice cream a week for the next year? Could you eat a slice of pizza every day for 30 days straight? Would that be “dedication”? Not if you really like pizza. The key is to keep liking ice cream for all those years, to not get tired of pizza every day for a month. That’s where you’d need to dedicate your efforts.
Whenever I give a seminar, teach a course, or discuss fitness with my clients I often talk about nourishing your drive. Your drive is that internal passion that causes you to take those unglamorous, day to day, necessary steps to reach your goals. When it comes to fitness, dedication relates to building and maintaining this drive. You must find a way to reinforce how important you are, how important being fit and healthy is, and how important reaching your goals are to you. If you have a strong enough sense of those things, then those daily steps; eating the right foods, eating the proper amounts, being consistent with your workouts, bringing the right focus and effort into those workouts, staying positive and believing in yourself, etc., will be a lot easier to take.
Find a way to constantly nourish your drive. Whether it’s training in an inspiring environment, hiring a trainer, reading your favorite fitness magazine, following the progress of someone you admire, tracking your own progress and results against your goals, finding a great workout partner, or whatever it needs to be, if you are proactive in keeping yourself inspired, focused, and committed to push forward, those little positive steps you take in the right direction will continue to add up in your favor.
Maybe training and dieting for you will never be as easy as eating ice cream every day. But it can definitely be something that you enjoy enough to do so regularly that you progress to the point where you are exactly at the place you want to be.
Photo: Terry Goodlad Model: Stephanie Brewster
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