little black dress

How do you feel and what do you truly desire?

Standard

Exercise and training is very often associated with aesthetic based goals and typical motivation to train may involve one or more of the following statements:

I want to ‘tone’ up
I want to lose weight
I want to fit into my little black dress
I want to my belt to fit my trousers.

The internet and media are full of transformation photos detailing before and after shots showing how much the body in question has physically changed. The end result very often being a tanned, flexed tight physique. This level of physical change is what drives certain people to keep pushing their body harder and harder, and they wish to challenge themselves physically. I believe if done properly and safely, before and after photos can be a fantastic motivation.

However, I want to highlight areas that I feel often get neglected when we look at why a person should train and what can truly be achieved. I also want you to dig a bit deeper into your own motivation.

What these photos DO NOT show is what that person is FEELING & EXPERIENCING: confidence levels, energy, self belief, concentration levels, anxiety levels, how that person simply enters a room are all huge life changing factors and benefits that cannot be measured by looking at a photo.

For the sake of this blog I simply want to get you to think about your goals and remove the aesthetic aspects. Doing this will very often leave you with your true reason for training. It may also present your own individual underlying deeper motivation.

For example:

Take the typical statement of ‘I want to fit into my little black dress’.

Now lets say you achieve this, how would this make you FEEL?

If you achieved your physical goals, how would you FEEL whilst amongst your friends/family? How would you FEEL at work when dealing with challenging days? How would you FEEL when you wake up every morning? How would you FEEL in your current relationship?

Think of all of the above areas of your life, and how you would ideally like to perform in each area. I am not against anyone doing before and after photos (I am currently doing my own); all I am saying is there is much more to you than a photo, and some things cannot be measured externally.

Thanks for reading,

Tristan

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