Commitment not Motivation: Set Yourself Up for Success

Getting started or maintaining engagement in an activity such as training is hard, certainly training consistently is not something that is easy. That’s why it is vital that you set yourself up for success and find what motivates you or what you are willing to commit to achieving.

I am not a fan of the word motivation. In fact, hearing people say “I am just not motivated to do it”, is my number one hate in a gym setting. Why? Because, we all have days when we don’t feel “motivated” or have low energy, however, this does not make us any less committed. Saying to ourselves, “I don’t feel motivated” seems to perpetuate laziness in people and is often used as an excuse to not achieve our health and fitness goals. We all get busy and have commitments, what separates those who achieve what they desire and those who don’t, is more about their commitment than it is motivation.

Let’s instead start looking to the word committed. Replacing the thinking style of “are you motivated for training today?” to instead use, “are you committed to training today?”. When it comes to human behaviour, there is a lot to do with internal language. The language that we use in the way that we think about our decisions and actions is important. That is why I propose that we challenge ourselves to a language change, and look to change the word motivation to commitment in the context of our training.

So, whether we want to use the language of motivation or commitment, we need to look at two concepts, importance of the activity and confidence in your ability. This is according to Brehm’s (1975) motivational intensity theory which in this context is applied to suggest that how much importance you place on the activity and how confident you are in completing or participating in the task determines whether we will have the motivation (commitment) to start or persist with training.

Effort can be considered persistence when talking about making goals happen, this means effort (aka persistence) over time, not just effort in one session. It takes making sure that your goals are important enough to you, that you persist. Do you still want to be in the same place with your training in 6 or 12 months?

The answer is likely no, so set yourself up for success, and do the following activity for yourself to start thinking about your commitment to persisting. When you do this, think about some of the questions below, and rate on the scales the importance and your confidence levels.

If you are serious about training, then make sure you really put some thought into this. Overall, another question that is important to ask yourself is, “does my behaviour reflect or represent my goals?”, “how would others know that I value my goal of X, Y &Z? Does my behaviour show it?”.

Before completing this exercise, please have a goal in mind, this is targeted at those who are already training/ want to start training/ or need to get their butt back to training.

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Importance:

What do you value? Why is it important for you to train? Think big picture! Think about what is important in your life (e.g. setting a good example for my children about exercise). Then rate how important it is to you on the scale below:

0      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10

0-3 = You need to find something you value more, this is not of strong enough importance to you.

4-7 = While it is important, it’s not THE important thing or the thing you value in a way that will help you to make this type of change.

8-10 = This is very important to you, and you are likely to make positive change based on the importance of this value.

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Confidence:

How confident are you that you can do the training? Think about what you are confident that you would be able to achieve, how can you make it happen (e.g. I am confident that I can attend 3 times a week, for 45 mins). Once you have an idea of what you want to do, rate how confident you are in your ability to actually carry this out:

0      1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10

0-3 = You need to alter the activity to something that will increase your confidence in ability (e.g. less days per week or a different time).

4-7 = You might do it, but you’re not confident it will last. Perhaps adjust your expectations of yourself at this stage.

8-10 = You are ready to start this activity!

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Once you have completed this, hopefully you will have a goal in mind (e.g. compete in a novice competition in 6 months), and have decided that it is important to you, and why (e.g. to be healthier and have more confidence in myself), and decided how you will achieve this assessing your confidence (e.g. I will hit the gym 3 times per week, and get some coaching to keep me on track). Now, remind yourself of this important goal and underlying value, and start committing to the activity that you have identified you are confident in completing, and persist! Persistence is key. 

References:

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Richter, M. (2013). A closer look into the multi-layer structure of motivational intensity theory. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7 (1), 1-12. doi:10.1111/spc3.12007