It’s Unanimous!

The results are in on my “So What’s Your Excuse?” query I posted on Wednesday and it’s unanimous! (I couldn’t believe it either.) The number one reason why people don’t exercise is because… they fear death due to extreme boredom. (That wasn’t even an option which shows how out of touch I really am!) AND, to add insult to injury, an additional indication of how out of touch I really am, one other thing that came harshly to light was that I clearly need to establish some form of a social media standing since I am not nearly as poplar as I thought I was—not even my mom responded to my query so that right there goes to show that something has gone terribly awry. The results were unanimous because I got one brave soul out there who a) felt sorry for me and wanted to show some form of support—thank you Beth! or b) Beth is the only one who reads my posts!

Now that we know her name, let us (read: I) thank her for her support, thank you Beth, and offer her this one piece of advice:

Exercise does not have to be mundane as long as you are always challenging yourself to accomplish just a little bit more than you did the last time. Finding something you truly enjoy, as you have done with swimming, is half the battle. The next part is to change-up the routine either daily, weekly or monthly. For example, let’s say one week you work on perfecting the breast stroke and you’ve succeeded in doing 5 laps of that. The challenge would then be to try adding on more laps each time. Then the next week, switch strokes and challenge your body to perfect that new stroke.

Another alternative is to time yourself doing laps and then challenge yourself to get a little faster each week.

By being creative, boredom will never creep up on you and you’ll always have an ample supply of motivation.  Imagine it in these terms: it’s like having a job you hate… I mean really hate to the point of extreme loathing, if you can imagine such a thing… and being expected to spit out great work day after day, week after week, year after year. It just ain’t gonna happen… there is no motivation to propel you to work harder therefore you’re not seeing any results and you’re stuck in a rut. It’s similar to a bad workout. You know you hate it, it absolutely bores you to tears, you have zero fun performing it so it’s never going to get done. So… what you need to do is pick yourself up, get out of that situation and find something you truly enjoy that constantly motivates and challenges you in a good way. You’ll soon find that you are a much happier and healthier person all around!

So be it swimming, running, cycling, lifting weights.. whatever is may be that you enjoy, stick with that and continue to come up with creative ways to challenge yourself and next thing you know you’ll be fit as a fiddle without boredom ever having side-tracked you!