6 Secrets to Successful Motivation, Part 1

Motivation is one of the most talked about issues among trainers and fitness related professionals. Trainers approach me regularly asking, "how do I motivate my clients to eat better or stay on their program." My own clients often say, "I know what to do but I just can't seem to motivate myself." The thinking is that if clients are motivated to work a program fully, they will be more likely to achieve their desired results. So, here are "6 Secrets to Successful Motivation" as a helpful guide to the professional motivating a client as well as to the client motivating himself.

So let's begin. Perhaps we can define Motivation as "a desire to pursue; feeling pulled toward an end; feeling compelled to do something." Websters defines it as "the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action; the reason for the action"; "we did not understand his motivation"; "he acted with the best of motives." OK? So then a working definition might be "the pyschological feature that arouses a person to follow a fitness routine and/or healthy eating plan." So the following is Part 1, or the first three of "6 Secrets to Successful Motivation."

Secret #1 - You are already motivated.
That's right. There's no such thing as lack of motivation. When clients don't workout or fall-off of a nutrition program they think that they lack motivation. This isn't exactly the case. You see, they were perfectly motivated to do something else. No one does nothing. The question to ask them (or yourself) is "what did you do instead." This client has a success strategy for achieving the answer to the question. Remember, no one does nothing. So, if the answer is "I sat on the couch and watched TV," the client has a success strategy for achieving "sitting on the couch and watching TV." Does this make sense?

A client such as the one above now needs to determine how he did it. That is, how he successfully achieved "sitting on the couch and watching TV." Once the strategy is revealed and understood, the steps can be applied to the desired outcome or behavior. This could take the help of a trained professional. Once you learn this process, however, you can repeat it successfully over and over in nearly any situation. But what's really most important here is that you develop a sense of curiosity about how you accomplish things rather that lamenting as to why things don't go the way you think you want them to go.

Secret #2 - People have different Motivational Styles (Toward or Away From).
Every person is motivated either Toward or Away From. Psychologists might refer to this as approach/avoidance. Some people have variations on these styles and can be Toward With a Little Away; Away With a Little Toward ; or equally Toward and Away. These directional filters are related to a persons values. They are also quite possibly hardwired in our neurology. These directional filters are neither good nor bad, they are just the way the person is.

So how do you determine which is you (or your client)? Ask some questions: What are your fitness goals?; What do you want in a gym?; What do you want in a relationship? The answers to such questions will provide you with clues into the motivational style of your client (or yourself).

Toward people will answer in ways such as: I want to have a six pack; I want a gym close to my house; I want someone who listens to me.

Away From people will answer in ways such as: I don't want be too muscular; I don't want to have to walk too far to get there; I don't want a lot of drama.

Combined Toward and Away people answer in ways such as: I want a six pack but I don't want to be too thin; I don't want a gym that's a fashion show but I do need nice people; I want someone fun but not a drinker or smoker.

Determining this filter is relatively easy once you get the idea. But then what do you do? You encourage and motivate using language or mental images that are congruent with the person's directional filter. A Toward person will respond to future positively oriented statements such as: "come on you want those abs"; "just imagine how you're going to look after this." I rely heavily on the use of mental images and a Toward person will benefit from positive future oucome imagery of himself having already achieved the goal. As an example, I am highly motivated by a positve picture of me looking exactly the way I want my body to look.

For someone motivated Away From, they will respond better to statements about what will happen if they don't do the exercise or eat right. For example: "you said you didn't want to get fat"; or "if you eat that it'll go directly to your hips." Negative imagery is also helpful here. However, it is most important that you never ever make a negative image of yourself. Make the negative image of someone else. It will work. Since you already know that positive images work for me, well, so do negative ones. I am highly motivated by visually reminding myself what the typical guy my age walking through the mall looks like. And quite frankly, it's scary enough to generally get me to comply with any routine or eating strategy. Since both positve and negative seem to be effective for me, my directional filters are fairly evenly both Toward and Away.

Obviously now you have figured that Toward and Away From people are best motivated using a combined approach. As I said, I'm one of those and the images as I described to you earlier work great. Verbal prodding both toward and away is also very useful for people with a mixed directional filter.

Secret #3 - You have existing strategies already present that can be successfully applied to any desired outcome.
You don't need a psychological overhaul to achieve something. Whatever you do instead of what your stated outcome is, is driven by a successful strategy. Ask "how do you know it's time to do it", or "how do you do it" and the answer will reveal how to achieve the desired goal. You may have to ask several times as the answers reside at the unconscious level of awareness. If the couch sitter's strategy is that he imagines the couch and "it just looks so good" that he can't resist, then making pictures of the desired outcome in the same way will result in motivation to achieve the goal. Verbal statements follow the same course of logic.

This is a little over-simplified. There is no way for me to educate you fully in this forum. I can teach you, however, in person and even likely on the telephone. It doesn't take too much time and once you have it, you can apply it over and over again in any situation.
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That's Part 1. Part 2 will be posted shortly. Inquiries or comments may be posted here. I will answer all.
John Hudome