Exercise For Life

 

Any type of physical activity is a vital part of living a healthier life and pretty much everyone has to be mobile to some extent. We walk to work, to the train or bus on our daily commute, to the local shop. The lawn has to be mowed, the garden kept in shape, vacuuming, cleaning, hanging out the clothes and so on. There are a multitude of ways that we are active without even realising it.

 

These daily activities do help to keep our muscles and ligaments moving, increase circulation and breathing, stimulate bone density and generally avoid our tendency to be overly sedentary, something that becomes more common as we age. The question is though, is it enough for a healthy life? A quick google search will reveal that the overwhelming view is that we should be doing substantially more targeted exercise over and above our usual daily activities.

 

Life is full of responsibilities and commitments, we have to earn a living, feed ourselves, shower, iron, clean, maintain a household, probably a car, maybe we have family, the list goes on and on, and we haven’t even considered our leisure time! With all these demands vying for our attention, the idea of adding a ‘should do’ like exercising can seem impossible, it’s just not a priority. 

 

When we hear about the importance of exercising, like we do many other health related activities that are good for us, we can feel guilty for not doing it. Perhaps we just don't care or we think it’s something we’ll do when we clear the decks, which of course, never happens. We may even get inspired about exercising and make attempts to put a routine in place, sign up to the gym, start jogging, cycling or walking every day, but often that initial motivation doesn't last long, and we are back to our usual habitual routines.

 

The physical health benefits of regular exercise are well known and there’s no doubt about the improvements it can bring to one’s mental and emotional life, not to mention self image. What I wasn’t prepared for was the way in which it powered and inspired so much engagement with all other areas of my life.

 

I exercise every day, twice a day if you include my 30 minute walk I do every morning. I never miss a day and the reason is that I am so conscious of how energised and engaged exercise makes me, I couldn’t possibly risk losing any of that positive momentum and succumbing to the gravitational pull of apathy and passivity.

 

My objective here is to communicate that experience to you and address the most important point, which is how to get inspired and stay motivated to make exercise a non-negotiable part of your life.

 

It’s important to point out that taking on any exercise regime should come with some consideration about your current state of physical health. This is even more important if you haven’t exercised in a while or you're getting a bit older. We should always approach everything we do with as much discernment and awareness as possible. In terms of our physical state, that means consulting the advice of a health care professional, and it can’t hurt to get a general health check up to clear the way for our inspiration and motivation.

 

The mental game

I haven't been particularly motivated about exercising throughout my life. I have engaged with exercise for periods with things like jogging, cycling, resistance training (weights), swimming, basketball and so on. Sure, I enjoyed it all, but not in a way where I was motivated to continue it as a constant companion to my other life’s activities. Consequently, I’ve had much longer periods of time when I haven’t exercised at all.

 

When I started exercising again recently after my depressiveness lifted, I didn’t think much beyond my two main goals that I was focused on, losing some weight and getting fit. I never imagined how important it would become and how committing to exercise could stimulate such incredible changes in my life that had profound consequences. 

 

The first thing that made all the difference and what kept me very disciplined was that I was determined and focused about what I wanted to achieve. Through my period of personal adversity and gross inactivity a few years ago, I’d gained more weight than I ever had in my life and become very unfit. I would feel very physically stressed just walking up a few flights of stairs or when I’d rush to catch a bus.

 

When the light went on for me, I had this clear and resolute desire to lose the weight and get my health back. I considered what I needed to do, assiduously researched the strategies that would work, then enacted the details of those strategies in my life. I achieved my weight loss goal in 3 months and my fitness goals within a year, never wavering once from my plan.

 

This success, perhaps one of the most dramatic and focused of my life, stimulated a lot of reflection about the difficulty that so many people experience in this area. It kept coming back to this point that weight loss, exercising, healthy eating, anything you want to achieve in life is about cultivating and training the necessary mental qualities and skills that will actualise those goals.

 

This means realising that it’s a mental game. Discipline, fortitude, self control, patience, self awareness, emotional awareness and strength, courage, commitment, motivation and so on. Whatever it is that you want to do, you just have to accept that it’s your mind that is going to make it happen. If you learn to use it to serve your best interests instead of being a prisoner its habitual impulses, desires and self sabotage, there’s no stopping you.

 

Getting across the psychology of motivation, discipline and goal focused achievement means you stop leaving things to chance. I’ve been involved in personal growth for some time with periods of being ‘offline’ for a while too, so I’m no stranger to an increased level of self understanding, but I didn’t really have an indepth awareness of these concepts myself.

 

I was lucky in that I had a unique set of conditioning circumstances in the adversity I experienced that helped motivate me. The strength of this understanding came later, amongst many others, that relate to these core concepts of staying inspired and motivated. This is why the three Inspired Warrior focus elements came into being and start with inspiration, then progress through awareness to warrior spirit, although they’re all relevant as stand alone elements.

 

As with my own journey, that initial inspiration is very important, it’s the start of the journey. Without a strong will or unique conditioning circumstance though, we may find it difficult to persevere through the early grind to see the results of our efforts which will inspire us further. Staying motivated means keeping the vision of our initial inspiration in the forefront of our mind so we don’t give up.

 

Being dogged and determined, firing up that warrior spirit, encouraging our belief that it’s not only possible, but we know that we are going to succeed. Everything we are is our beliefs. If we want something, if we want to change our lives, we have to find a way to believe in it more than we believe that giving into our impulses  and undermining voices is the better option.

 

Staying positive

After our initial burst of enthusiasm for our new exercise regime recedes and the hard work begins, we can find our commitment being tested. This is normal and points out the fact that if we want to reach our goals we have to find a way to stay engaged. Our exercise routine doesn't have to be an unpleasant ‘should’ that we begrudgingly fulfil, something we grind out because we know it’s for the greater good.

 

This sense of self care may be enough to keep us going, but if it feels like an obligation, or worse, a burden, that commitment is at risk of gradually fizzling out. The key is to stay inspired and energised and we can do that by changing our relationship to it, we just have to find a way to keep relating to our activity from a positive attitude and mindset, we stay aware of the reasons behind our inspiration and the positive benefits behind our goals.

 

As people, we not only form relationships with other people, we form them with the things we do. In an unconscious way, we allow our past conditionings, habits and dispositions to inform whether we find experiences pleasant or unpleasant, and in some cases, neutral, we’re not moved either way. If our motivation and energetic disposition isn’t there, we way start building and solidifying an unpleasant relationship with exercise.

 

Every day when we’re approaching our exercise time, we might feel our apathy arise, the ‘I don’t wanna’ voice starts chiming in, it weighs us down and tests our resolve. Then while we’re exercising, we might be feeling and thinking ‘when will this all be over’, we’re visualising getting home, showering, flopping on the couch and watching Netflix, anything but engaging with what we’re doing, the physicality, the rigour, but also the vigour!

 

The problem here is that we are unconsciously accepting our thought and feeling biases towards our experience, without any sense or awareness that it can be challenged and replaced with thoughts and feelings that serve our goals and better interests. Why do we do this?

 

Habit, lack of confidence and self belief, not realising that we actually have the power to completely direct our experiences! Changing our relationship to them is simply a matter of training. If we can unconsciously form feeling and thinking habits towards exercise, then we can also consciously change those associations. Yes, it’s hard work to begin with, but with awareness and training which is just repetition to form new positive habits, we get some momentum going and then we just surf the wave.

 

One of the things that keeps me exercising every single day, is the sense of invigoration I get from it. When I start exercising, I can often feel a bit apathetic and clumsy, not in the flow and not feeling it. I’ve come to realise that this is just because I’m not warmed up, the body isn’t yet acclimatised to the exertion I’m asking of it. At this point, I can get those undermining feelings but I just ignore them and refocus on what’s going on.

 

During warm up, I go at an easy pace, something that feels relatively enjoyable, just taking it easy. After about five minutes, I’m starting to feel it so my effort increases, and by the eight to ten minute mark, I'm starting to flow! Without even consciously pushing myself, I’m feeling energised and want to extend myself.

 

Throughout all this I’m fully engaged and aware of what’s going on. I’m not thinking of anything else, and when my mind does go off, I just bring it back to the immediacy of the experience. I check in with my exercise form, especially when I'm doing weights or calisthenics, I’m noting how much I’m pushing myself, do I need to back off or just keep up the current pace, am I feeling inspired or am I feeling negative? Throughout all this I’m also feeling very connected to the outright rigour and invigoration of it all.

 

When I started exercising it was very unpleasant, in that I was pushing myself to run for ten to fifteen minutes a day, at whatever pace I could manage without stopping. It was a symphony of pain! As unpleasant as it was, even at that early stage, there was still something very positive in my experience that I was aware of, and this kept me going.

 

This had something to do with the commitment to it and keeping the goal clearly in front of me, the belief! The positivity of great effort in the face of adversity and believing in something, being fully conscious of the goodness of it has great benefits.

 

All these things kept me inspired and motivated and in no doubt whatsoever that I would continue my routine and reach my goals. I never once allowed doubt to get its claws into me, I just focused on the positivity of it all.

 

The self that undermines

So you’ve got a handle on your motivational strategies, you have a plan about how to stay positive and conscious of your goals? That’s great, the more you train them in, the stronger you’ll be and you're going to have to be because at some point, those old parts of your psyche that want to just chill out and not worry about the world are going to mount an attack.

 

The ego is devious and perfectly tuned to your weaknesses. It will whisper sweet rationalisations in your ear, very convincing reasons to miss just this one day of your routine. Sure, why not, you’ve been putting in, you deserve it right?! Then you’ll be feeling extra tired a few days later. No matter, I’ve got exercise credits up and I need the down time.

 

This is the way of things, it’s the whittling away of our commitment and resolve. The old you comes along and takes tiny little bites of the cheese, a nibble here, a nibble there and before long, there’s no cheese left.

 

When I had an evening work commitment a while ago, the job went into the late hours and was also an hour’s drive out of town, so by the time I got home it was one am in the morning. On the way home I realised that I had not done my afternoon exercise and it being so late, would I do it? My mind started with all the quite valid reasons why it was perfectly OK to skip today’s exercise. ‘It’s so late, you’re just being rigid, you really don’t need to, you’ve been so committed, one day won’t matter’.

 

At this point, a different voice suggested, ‘actually, why not? My manager has said come in late, so I can get enough sleep. Is it just the idea that it’s too late that’s stopping me? I know I am going to enjoy it, no matter what the time is. At that moment, I decided to go for my run and use it as a test. I’d do the exercise and see if any of the rationalisations had any truth to them.

 

Of course they didn’t, and yes, I enjoyed exercising, it invigorated me even more because of my commitment to it, because I overcame the temptation to give in a little bit, to not fully honour that warrior spirit.

 

Inspiration, motivation, commitment and discipline are precious things, they can turn your life into literally anything you want. The old self will test you, it has to, perhaps the universe wants to find out how much you really want it. Whatever the reason is, you have to stay on point and watch out for all those parts of yourself that will try to distract you from your goals.

 

In the early days, we may have to treat those undermining parts like a dangerous enemy. Over time, as we more firmly establish our discipline and commitment, we can come to see these parts of ourselves more as our own unruly child that we love, but one that has no power to manipulate us anymore.

 

Being disciplined in this way is not about being rigid and driving oneself coldly and mercifully on. We don’t have to feel like a prisoner to our routine. Part of being disciplined is staying aware of the why of it, the reasons why we are so committed it. Paradoxically, discipline is about freedom. Actualising positive goals brings great benefits to our life, but they require hard work which is extremely rewarding.

 

A life of always getting what we want without effort, without stretching ourselves isn’t very satisfying or invigorating at all. If we are conscious of these things, we don’t feel burdened by discipline, it’s the opposite, we feel energised by it.

 

Being fully aware of the positivity of discipline and commitment means we can also see if we are being religious or superstitious about our routines. Are we being rigid due to underlying irrational fears? If we don’t do exactly the same thing every day, there’ll be some unknown backlash?

 

Superstitiousness can be present in our lives without even realising it. We can have underlying irrational fears about the things we do, or doing them a certain way. Once we identify this, it frees us up immediately. This can be present in our habits, rituals and routines of daily life. We want to avoid being impelled by unseen negative ideas and emotions as they don’t lead to a free state of being. Bringing as much awareness to how we stick to our routines can be immensely supportive and beneficial.

 

Change it up

This is a great practice which is about keeping things fresh and applies to all areas of life. Routine is such a powerful tool to train ourselves day in day out to develop powerfully positive habits. However, the near enemy of routine is switching off and going into autopilot mode. We must challenge ourselves to stay aware in all of our daily life, and this can be helped by being creative and changing things up often.

 

I’ve done this in various ways including changing my rigorous daily exercise session from morning to evenings. I’ve also added different exercises, I swap different exercises in and out periodically. When I run, I choose a different route everyday, sometimes on the fly, I’ll just spontaneously jog a street block I’ve never been on before.

 

With my resistance and cardio training, I mix my super sets up and the exercises within the super set, doing the first one last and so on. Instead of exercising the right side first every time, I’ll switch sides every session. This is not only helpful to keep you engaged and thinking about how you are exercising, it also keeps the body guessing instead of just getting used to doing exactly the same exercise every time.

 

I also make sure I do something different in my overall daily life routine outside of exercising, for instance, I started riding to the beach once a week for a swim in the surf before work, not always on the same day. I might also decide to occasionally stop at a cafe on the way to work for breakfast, sometimes with a friend. I make sure I go on a long motorbike ride on the weekend once every four to six weeks. Another strategy I utilise is to set reminders so I don’t forget my purpose.

 

Instead of stagnating and becoming inured by routine-ness, we can keep a sense of freshness and engagement that supports routine in a very positive way. There’s no end to the way we can creatively balance the power of routine with the freshness of something new, bringing the best of both these aspects together.

 

Engaging…it just keeps giving!

 

Another surprise for me is how much insight and understanding has come from engaging wholeheartedly with exercise, and not just exercise but everything I do to effect positive change in my life. Learning about inspiration, motivation, apathy, rationalising myself out of things, mental strength, breaking the pain barrier, self belief, confidence and so on has been amazing! In the context of a life that is committed to personal practice, there’s no end to the ways in which these personal insights can arise.

 

What astounded me was the extent to which exercise positively affected my whole psychology, and strengthened all areas of my physical, mental and emotional life. Nothing was untouched by a conscious and focused engagement with this physical activity. This speaks to this truth of the false divide we have between mind and body.

 

Once you engage wholeheartedly with the complete transformation of self in all its aspects, paying equal attention to body as we do with mind, we see how intertwined they are, there is no separation. The health of one cannot be complete without the health of the other.

 

It’s no wonder mental health is such a big problem in modern life that is way underdiagnosed. Fully realising the wholeness that can be experienced by attending to all our health needs is profoundly life changing, it’s up to each one of us to walk the path, it just takes the first step.