"Psst!" he whispers as he gently grabs at your ankles. "I know you are tired. I know you want to relax. This is Saturday. Time to rest. Time to chill and forget the stresses of a week of mediocrity."
You feel your body sink into the couch. His voice is hypnotic and you slowly drift into apathy just to avoid the stress you felt so powerfully all work week. If you fall asleep now, will you wake up ten years later? One hundred years? Will you wake up covered in cobwebs and the detritus of a long ago era? Will your tale be told and retold again and again throughout history as a warning to others against the dangers of the fairy realm?
Ok, so maybe I am being a little dramatic but know that it's only because I have a motivation troll. See:
Motivation is the hardest part of any active lifestyle. It's not the running. It's not lifting weights or burpees. All of those things are a piece of cake in comparison to the negative thoughts that occur within your own head. Whether that being your inner bully, telling you that you can't do it so why bother, or your inner enabler telling you that the couch is more comfortable anyway, these thoughts have a way of preventing us from performing actions that will benefit us in the long run.
It's a natural phenomena for us to want to avoid pain, but sometimes pain can be a good thing. Sometimes, a little pain is necessary in order to achieve something great. It is not unreasonable, however to understand why the thought of going through it can be hard to overcome.
I suffer on and off from anxiety and depression. This is why finding motivation to me can feel like battling a gnarly little troll. I may not be able to fight it with a sword or a mace but I can fight it through activity. The more I succumb to the couch, the more I can feel it's weight on my back -- growing bigger day by day until I can't even get out of bed. When it finally occurred to me that the more I moved, the smaller and more manageable the troll became, the easier it was for me to find the necessary motivation.
Your motivation might be different from mine. That's ok. The key is to find that kindling that fuels your fires - that gets you up, even when you don't want to be up.
Almost every day I struggle to get out there. For me, however, the thought of feeling depression take over, the self loathing and the nearly constant fatigue is my motivation to get me pounding the pavement. I have come to the conclusion that I'd rather suffer through thirty minutes of running (sometimes in the cold rain) than experience the depression I feel if I don't.
And, as if it were a miracle, I start to enjoy my work out. I realized that the thought of exercise is far scarier than the exercise itself and nine times out of ten, it's easier and far more enjoyable than I anticipated. Not only that, but the longer and more consistent I am, the easier it is for me to battle the inactivity. Most of the pain comes not from the workout, but the motivation to perform the workout.
And it's not a miracle at all. It's achievement. The more you achieve, the better you can feel -- the smaller the troll will become. It doesn't take overnight, but I promise you it will happen. I can't say that getting up to exercise will ever be incredibly easy - that fighting the couch will ever be a piece of cake -- but eventually the exercise will become easier until the only obstacle you have is putting on your shoes.
And we can all put on our shoes, right?
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