Following on from my Instagram post I thought I’d write an actual article on this subject cause I could of spoken more on the post but I ran out of space, I will try get my point across as best I can but I’m not a natural writer but bear with me cause it will make sense in the end.

Now I’m going to use a million quotes in this piece, because its such a varied topic and if you ask 100 people I’m sure you would get 100 different ways people motivate themselves, it’s a very personal thing , but you’ll also find that most ways will fall into a some sort of category, which I will discuss later.

As I said in my post, I’m a big believer in the Jim Wendler’s philosophy on this, and that is Discipline over Motivation, Jim basically says, that motivation is an emotional response, and with every emotion there is ups and downs, so if you only train when you’ve been motivated by something like a picture or video, or cause someone’s fired you up with their motivational speech, how you going to train during the lows? When you’re not motivated? That’s where Discipline comes in, you need to be disciplined to succeed, ask anyone that has had success in any area, be it sport, business or any other aspect, they will tell you it took discipline and sacrifice, as well as motivation to keep going.

My point being, motivation should always be secondary to discipline, but having said that motivation can keep you disciplined, but I prefer to address my discipline first.

So how do we stay disciplined?

Well here are 3 tips you can use to help, but at the end of the day, discipline comes from you, no one can make you disciplined, you can be accountable to someone like a coach or partner but they can’t give you discipline.

1. Take Pride In Your Training, do everything correct, your form, your execution, make every rep perfect, don’t take short cuts, do cheat, do everything you planned to do when you walked in, it will give you a massive feeling of wellbeing, and self-pride, which can be motivating in itself.
2. Be Disciplined Outside The Gym, we are all good at putting in the time in the gym, I’ve seen many people give a 100% and more in the gym but where they fall down is the only time they are disciplined is in the gym, you need to carry that over to every aspect of your life, diet, sleep, rest, spending time with family and friends, hobbies, interests, it’s so important to be disciplined in every aspect of your life, if you really want to succeed. 

3. Get Your Head Right, be it emotionally, physically or mentally, you need to be in the right head space to stay on track, try and limit stress in your life and try and leave the rest of the world at the door, when you enter the gym, for those hours your in the gym, that should be your focus. I get the whole social media thing, and wanting to document your workouts, but ask yourself this, are you thinking about the lift or how many likes it will get?

So now you’ve got your Discipline right, lets get back to motivation.

 There are two distinctive types of motivation,

intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, in layman’s terms, internal and external motivation, so internal is our own desire to achieve something, and our external motivation is the outside influences on our motivation, for example, money, rewards or trophies.

Like I said before there are many many ways to stay or be motivated but they usually fall into one of these two categories, and people have their own ways of using these two factors.

Here are my top 5 ways that I stay motivated and wanting to keep pushing in my own life and training.

1. Goal Setting.

To me this is the most important way to stay on track, and stay motivated, there is nothing wrong with having huge long term goals, I mean there is a reason why all of us get into training, some of us have small goals like getting down a dress size for a wedding, losing a bit of weight for a holiday and these are all admiral goals. But some of us have massive goals, like being Worlds Strongest Man, Mr Olympia, Fighting in the UFC or playing a sport for our country, all great goals, what all these goals have in common is that they require steps that needed to be taken to achieve those goals. With the smaller goals these steps are going to be more short term and achievable, so if your working towards a big goal, then you need to set smaller more achievable goals along the way, if you only focus on the long term goal then you are going to struggle to stay focused and motivated as it will seem so far away.

Bottom line no matter what your goals, take one step at a time, every step forward is a step closer to your goal, but set yourself achievable short-term goals along the way, reward yourself for the small victories and the big ones will come. 

2. Believe in Yourself

Confucius said, “he who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”

If you don’t believe in yourself how can you expect anyone else too? Its your dream, its your goals, no one is going to be as passionate about it as you are, so don’t let other peoples opinions affect how you view yourself, there has been a million quotes written about this subject but my favourite is Will Smiths in Pursuit of Happiness

Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something.

Not even me. All right?

You got a dream? You gotta protect it.

People can’t do something themselves; they want to tell you you can’t do it.

You want something? Go get it! Period!

3. Look At The Big Picture, it’s never going to be easy, it’s not always going to go your way, you’re going to fall off the path, you’re going to cheat on your diet, you’re going to miss workouts, but no one has ever failed because of a few mistakes, every great athlete and business tycoon in the world has failed at something, Michael Jordan never made his high school basket ball team cause they said he was too short!! Did he quit? Look at the bigger picture, look how far you’ve come and where you want to be, no route to success is a straight line, there will be ups and downs but you want it bad enough, you will get it, focus on that big picture.

You’re going to make mistakes. The key is to learn from them as fast as possible and make changes as soon as you can. That’s not always easy to do because ego and pride get in the way, but you must put all that aside and look at the big picture.

Tiger Woods

4. Surround Yourself With The Right People, Negative people have no place in your world, you’ve spend time and effort in getting where you are, no one has the right too take that away from you, if they don’t share in your dream or vision, you don’t need them, I’m so lucky to have amazing friends and family that have supported me for nearly 3 decades, I have awesome clients that push themselves and me to be better, and I have unparalleled support from Tuff Wraps Uk, anyone that brings me down or questions my path are gone.

“You need to associate with people that inspire you, people that challenge you to rise higher, people that make you better. Don’t waste your valuable time with people that are not adding to your growth. Your destiny is too important.” Joel Osteen 

5. Get Organised, how many times have you heard the expression, piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance? You wouldn’t get in your car start driving and try to reach a destination you’d never been to before without a map or satnav? So why would you embark on a training plan, diet or goal without a plan of how to get there? So many times I’ve seen people follow a training program, which is roughly 8 hours a week without any thought of how they are going to structure everything else to help them achieve their goals, stay organised in every aspect of your life, and the training will be a success. Eating bad, missing meals, poor sleep, stress, negativity, just some of the factors that can undo all the work you do in the gym and distract from your goals.

In conclusion, there are many ways to stay motivated but they come from two sources, the most important Is you, and the second, the things and people around you, you and you alone are responsible for achieving your goals, no one can do it for you, so firstly look at your discipline and why you are doing what you are doing, then secondly look at your own motivation as to why you are on this path, and what your goals are.

Use every tool possible to reach your goals, and never ever give up!!!!!!!!!