I spoke about this briefly in my previous blog post…
I am continuing this because everybody struggles with this issue.
There are thousands of people suffering from health issues, obesity, etc who are unable to get their health back because they can’t exercise daily.
I’ve had the same issue as well.
During my teenage years and early adulthood, it was about how I could go to the gym daily so I can build a better body.
The first 2 years was a struggle and a hit and a miss.
I would go for 2 days, take off for 3 days.
I would go for 4 days and not go at all for a week.
But there came a transition point…
When I made exercise a priority…
My mindset changed.
The mindset was “If in the modern age of 21st century, you cannot allocate 1 hour of time towards exercise on a daily basis, then all the amenities in the world are useless. You may as well die”.
So at that moment, I resolved to find time for exercise no matter what happened.
Because I told myself that if I didn’t exercise for 1 hour, I might as well accept death because I am not living life the way it’s supposed to be lived.
I started small.
Went to the gym daily and would only do 2 or 3 exercises.
But I kept them up continuously for around 50 days.
There would be days when I would workout for an hour and complete my workout.
But my non-negotiable requirement was that I go to the gym and do 2 – 3 exercises.
The eventual result, exercise became a habit.
There was a time in my life when not exercising made me feel bad.
I needed endorphins from the exercise.
The routine kind of faltered after an accident (and then I recovered and got back on track). But I’ve had my ons and offs.
So now if you’re someone who’s struggling to be consistent with exercise…
The solution is simple.
You have to change your mindset. You have to understand that in the modern 21st century, we have so many amenities available to us. There is also tough competition.
However, if we aren’t able to commit 1 hour a day for ourselves towards exercise (either in the form of walking or actual exercises), then our life is nothing but a living death.
So consider embarking on a journey to exercise daily for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
And set your goal small.
Your minimum self discipline required should be just 15 minutes of Yoga Daily.
Or 15 minutes of walking.
And stick to that for every single day for the next 50 days.
The 15 minutes of exercise would have become a habit and the 1 hour would soon be on it’s way to becoming part of your habit and daily exercising a part of your identify and an asset that builds your self-discipline muscle.
Thank you.
This is Harry Ramsay, signing off from Authentic Discipline.