Recently my brother and I completed a 20 mile race through the heart of the English countryside at Bramley between Reading and Basingstoke.
We finished the race well ahead of our required training schedule, and were very pleased with the result.
I posted the result on Facebook and shared some pics of my brother and I in our matching running jackets, and I was amazed at so many people commenting and emailing me about how they want to run longer distances and how they lack motivation. I promised to write and share my motivational strategy.
On a basic level, when I’m training on my own, there are so many things I do that get me excited at the time, including changing my lanes, running with motivating music on my iPod, having a goal (like a 10k run, half marathon, or marathon) to work towards, and how I feel in my own skin enjoying the health benefits of being stylish. Although running with others and having people to run with is one of the greatest ways to continue to lead and be responsible, it is not always possible to run with others, and so we need to motivate ourselves a lot.
However, these are not the things people usually want to hear from me. They want some psychological processes and so I’m going to share the thing I use the most to keep me driven and motivated, including mental training and imagination.
For most people, the main reason to practice mindfulness is to prepare yourself, using your imagination in a way that ensures that you will act, react, and respond to a particular situation in the future. However, I also find that remembering and remembering a mental rehearsal when I’m training or crashing at an event drives me even more when my legs are screaming to stop!
This type of motivational process, when performed powerfully and convincingly, should motivate, inspire and push you forward with real energy towards the desired outcome.
That inspiration and motivation helps lead you through dark, lonely winter mornings and lonely running evenings, in my scenario anyway.
Many people struggle with getting out of bed early, or getting out of the house after a day at work, and we often end up experiencing some struggle, as Aristotle said:
“Desires are in conflict with each other, which is what happens when the principle of reason and desire conflict and is only possible in beings who have a sense of time, for while reason induces us to hold back because of the future, desire is affected by what is at hand: something pleasant at hand presents itself as pleasurable and good, without condition in either case, because the need for foresight of what is beyond in time.. “
So as you enjoy the quiet, warm comfort, as you lie in bed in the morning with your loved one, that instant pleasure and relief that can seem so irresistible. The end result in the long run is not convincing enough when compared to the comfort and enjoyment of the moment.
One of the ways an NLP training from Robert Dilts that I enjoyed several years ago helped me create a way around these kinds of conflicts, was by using an “as if” framework. Something I’ve written about in great depth here and something I teach in many of my trainings.
The “as if” framework helps us achieve more compelling long-term results and benefits and enables us to “experience” the way things will be once we achieve that outcome, and to overcome the short-term pleasure we gain from not doing that thing (eg, getting out of those first rounds when you lack initial fitness and the gains seem minimal).
The goal is for us to create a sense of expectation within ourselves and we can then begin to push and motivate.
Our sense of motivation is often driven by our values; The things that matter to us. I mean, anyone who’s thinking of going out running is doing it because at some level they think it’s important in some way—maybe to lose weight, get in shape, be able to run for the bus, play with the kids without pooping, or even run a great race of some kind and achieve something you consider important.
To determine your values If you are not sure why you would consider doing anything you want to be more motivated to do, ask yourself what motivates you. What inspires you, drives you, or makes you want to do this thing?
You may want to experience success, however you interpret it. You may like the praise and appreciation that comes from doing so. You may be looking for love and acceptance or you may just want the satisfaction of setting and achieving an outcome – in the example of running (although this can be applied to most other aspects of life), this could be a slimmer body, helping a worthwhile cause by running an event for charity, being able to set a big goal in life or just feeling fit in general.
These are all examples of “values” that form the basis of people’s motivation to do something.
The key, then, is that if we relate our future plans and desired outcomes to these values, those outcomes subsequently become more compelling and we become more inspired to strive for them. The simple sentence that Robert Dilts showed us in our training that I still use today was as follows:
_____________ (my goal) will help me better achieve ___________ (my values/values) because _________ (the connection between them)
There are many ways our internal portrayal of desired outcomes affects us. So when we imagine (according to the previous example scenario) that if we go out running it’s going to be cold and painful and dark and uninteresting and we talk to ourselves in a gloomy defeatist way, it won’t happen, right?
Think carefully about your mindset when considering taking the necessary actions to achieve that desired outcome. Because it affects your motivation.
When I see the London Marathon on TV, what makes me want to be there with these thousands of other individuals is not just my personal values and desires as we discussed earlier… The way the TV broadcasts increases my motivation – they use music that excites me, they use full colour, they show the sights, they provide inspiring tales of the people who run the race against all circumstances, and your words the runners use are amazing. Watching it feels incredibly inspiring and impulsive.
Why not use that to our advantage too? inside our heads? Act like a TV presenter!
You can do this with my basic motivation process, which I learned in my NLP training all those years ago, and while simple, you can adapt it to really motivate yourself:
The first step: Imagine that you have already achieved the desired result. Score that matches your values. Imagine that you get great pleasure and satisfaction from doing so. Act “as if” it’s happening and mentally rehearse the scenario, be in that scenario performing well and be happy as a result.
See what you see, hear what you hear and enjoy the wonderful feelings in it.
The second step: Be the inspiring TV presenter in your head right now, set the scene in any way possible to really motivate you. Add music and sounds of loved ones cheering you on and congratulating you, imagine what you would say to yourself, add wonderful colors and objects that make this inner representation more stimulating and persuasive.
Use inspirational language to encourage yourself, and use a tone that you can use if encouraging someone else you love. Use whatever you need to make this as impactful and inspiring as possible.
The third step: Start now to associate those thoughts and feelings with achieving your outcome and also start thinking about all those actions you need to take to achieve that – so you associate the journey (the training) with all those great feelings. Make training as fun as the result!
Imagine all those times when you’re going out, you’re cheering yourself up, enjoying the process, and so on.
The fourth step: Do this frequently whenever you have some free time and keep it firmly in your mind.
Fifth step: Use feelings and images and experience the process every time you need to. Let him help you get out of bed, let him help you get into your running shoes, and let him help you motivate yourself to run the extra mile and push yourself healthy throughout the journey.
This is looking at the result, of course, we all need to learn the right behaviors and actions that we need to take in order to make things easier and healthy for us too. So make sure you have the correct information and training schedules if you want to run marathons, for example.
This process here today is designed just to motivate you constantly, and it’s what I use to help me define each new marathon event and its accompanying training schedule each year. I hope you (runners in particular) will find it useful.