Mondays come around every week, for everyone. It is inevitable.
No matter your personality, your motivation, your reasons for working out and getting ahead, you will face days where you don’t feel like getting out of bed, don’t feel like taking another step, don’t feel like pushing yourself. And it’s tempting when you feel like quitting, to feel like you’ve already failed.
But the fact is that dealing with those days are part of the pain of getting to where you want to be. How you handle those days when you don’t feel like pushing forward is often the key difference between those who succeed and those who quit.
So when those days come, and they ARE coming, here is a little more motivation to push you to take one more step, push through one more workout, keep at it one more day.
Why Are You Doing This?
"The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do." -- Kobe Bryant
People have a lot of reasons for working out, for practicing, for training. What’s your main reason? For many people getting in better shape is the reason. You may want to look and feel healthier.
Or you just want to see what you’re capable of. Those are all good reasons. But it turns out altruism is a bigger motivator. Recent psychological studies indicate that a concern for others can be as big a motivator or bigger than self-interest.
If you want to live long enough to see your grandkids grow up, or you want to have more energy for playing with your kids now, this can be a powerful motivator. Wanting to make your team better can drive you to work harder than just making yourself better.
Wanting to inspire others to change and work harder, as Kobe says, can be the most important thing in your life. So when you feel like giving in, maybe rethink why you’re doing this in the first place.
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Failure Is Inevitable
"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." -- Babe Ruth
"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up." -- Vince Lombardi
Nobody’s perfect. Babe Ruth was arguably the greatest baseball player to ever play the game yet he led the American League in strikeouts five times in his career. Vince Lombardi was one of the greatest football coaches in professional football, yet teams he coached lost more than 25 percent of their games.
No matter how hard you train, or how hard you practice, you are going to face failure. How you handle failure will define who you are as an athlete and who you are as a person.
It helps when you get knocked down to remember that you’re not the first, not the last, not the only one down right now. As Vince Lombardi said, what matters is whether you get back up.
Seeing every failure as Babe Ruth did, as bringing you just one step closer to success, is the key to success in just about every area of life. So get up, dust yourself off, and try again.
Don’t Depend on Motivation
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” Jim Ryun
When you run into those days where you’re lacking motivation, how do you keep going?
Part of the answer, according to Jim Ryun, is that you keep going because you’re in the habit of doing it. Jim Ryun was an Olympic athlete in track and field and the first high school athlete to run a four-minute mile.
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Training at that level requires consistency over a long period of time, whether you feel like it or not. So set that routine, follow the routine, and just keep at it whether you feel like it or not. If you create good habits, they can carry you through even when motivation runs dry for a while.
And if that’s not enough to keep you going, here are five other motivational quotes to challenge and inspire you.
“The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running.” Unknown
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” Dale Carnegie
"Don't let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can do." John Wooden
Read: Serious Lessons from the Wizard of Westwood
"If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges." Pat Riley
"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving." Albert Einstein
