Gerry Hussey, performance psychologist
Q I’m a terrible one for starting fitness plans all fired up, but after a week or so, I fall off the wagon. How can I stay motivated? A There are two emotions involved in motivation — love and hate. We’re either motivated towards a thing we love, or away from the thing we hate. But when we’re motivated away from the thing we hate, we’re in flight. We have great traction straightaway but hate is a thing that dwindles away quickly.
If I look in the mirror and I’ve put on a bit of weight and I hate the way I look, I’m going to go to the gym, that’s going to motivate me until I don’t hate the way I look and, in the absence of hate, I’m just going to go back to the way I was. The relationship you have with your inner self is the most important thing. When you deeply love or care for yourself, you’re going to ask yourself, what is the lifestyle that I love?
You might say: “I’d love to be able to play half-anhour’s football with my kids and not be out of breath. I’d love to climb Croagh Patrick. I’d love to be able to go on a holiday and not be self-conscious about wearing a bikini. I love myself enough to get there.”
So that’s the first thing. Get rid of the hate, it’s filling your sub-conscious with fear and anger. You go on a diet and two weeks later you miss a gym session and that’s more anger. You’ve got to stop being angry at yourself and say: “You know what? This person that I am, they’re not perfect, but they’re a great person, they’re kind, hard working, they’re a great mother or father, they’re a good person to be around, you’ve got to learn to love that person.”
What you’re doing is switching the voice in your head — your inner critic — to an inner coach who is constantly encouraging when you do mess up or miss a couple of days. Your inner coach says: “That’s over, forget about that, let’s start again today.” But a lot of us have an inner critic in our head, a voice that is doubtful or critical or motivates us away from things that we hate and not towards things we love.