What Motivates You to Exercise?

Motivation generally comes from two sources: from within a person and from outside sources. External motivation might be your doctor telling you your blood pressure or cholesterol is high and you need to exercise and/or go on medication. All of a sudden your health is at risk and you feel motivated. Another example is praise. The feeling you get when someone says wow, you look great! Intrinsic motivation on the other hand comes from within. You have a desire within you to do something for personal satisfaction. You decide you want to climb Mt. Everest, go back to school and get your degree, or maybe you look in the mirror and just plain and simply don't like what you see and decide to go to the gym that very day.

Motivation gets results whether it comes from within or without. The combination is powerful - you're personally motivated to get in shape, and it's hard and you're not where you want to be and you're getting discouraged and then a friend who hasn't seen you in a while says WOW, you look great! Yes! The excitement is back and you're headed for the gym for another day of hard work.

Nike coined the most relevant tag line for exercise (and for life actually) and that is, "just do it." Whatever it is you want to do, you really can just do it. You decide. You decide each day and each moment if you're going to just go to the gym and workout, and if you're going to eat healthy. Negative thoughts are normal and exist in all of us. But we decide each and every day whether we allow our negative thoughts to dictate our actions or whether we control our thoughts and decide to JUST DO IT! I love you Nike.