Sunako · @sunakoirl
2nd Oct 2020 from TwitLonger
I was asked how I motivate myself to workout even when I feel tired and horrible
I think about myself in the future. Right now, I wish I would be good at x thing, right, and wish I would have started when I was x age. The second best time to start making progress towards that thing is right now. In a year or two I'll be grateful I forced myself to start. Even if I don't have fun right now, it's like an investment.
Speaking of investments, that especially applies to exercise: Thinking of myself in the future again, if I start having any more health problems that could have been preventable by taking better care of my body right now, such as back pain or something, I would be soooo mad at my current self for not being more responsible. If I do my best, or at least the minimum effort to be healthy with exercise, I can rest assured that I'll be able to continue my art career and do the things that I love doing like gaming for as long into my life as possible. It's an investment that sucks ass to do but when I'm 70 and still genki I'll be so grateful to myself now for being diligent and starting healthy habits.
Speaking of habits, that's also how you force yourself to do things. The more you do something, ideally at the same time of day each time, the more you trick your brain into thinking that this is a totally normal thing that you will obviously do. The more you do something the more you banish those starting barriers from your head that prevent you from starting and make you procrastinate instead.
I started walking and jogging pretty much only earlier this year, and it used to be like I was agonizing over the run I'd have to do all day long, until the guilt finally got big enough to force me to go. I hated it so much, I felt like it was surprising I didn't faint and die or have a heart attack or die during the jogging yet because that's how horrible it felt. But now, about three quarters of a year later, if it's running day, I just go do it after I gave time for breakfast to digest. It doesn't take the INSANE amount of mental fortitude it did back in jan, feb, march, anymore. I still feel reluctant to, but I just do it because I know it's for the best. My stamina is not much better at all yet, barely actually, but my mentality changed thanks to the habit, and I feel better about myself.
And then, I remember how much I dislike the kind of people who only just whine and complain, and never take the hard to swallow pill and try to fix or change things. Like my mum who has sleep problems but still drinks god knows how many cups of coffee per day, and some wine to top it off. I'm not gonna be one of those people. I always complain in my head that I suck at anatomy for example, so after making habits for all the other basic parts of my life like diet and exercise and sleep, god damn am I going to force myself to make a habit to practice anatomy next. I made like a priority list in my head for what things I need to fix in my life/make habits for, like what's the most important, and I'm slowly going through it over the years one by one. Some day it'll all come together and I'll be one of those productive superhumans I hope. Well, not being stressed and tired and overwhelmed all the time will be a good start, I'm still working on that. Can't try to fix all at once or it's too overwhelming.
Then lastly, there's a lot of things in life that you can't control. Your apartment building could go into construction for half a year for example. Or you could get a shitty boss that drains your mental health at work. You could be getting bullied at school. So what you do is focus on the things that you can control, such as making sure you got some fresh air every day, that you workout or jog three times a week, that you have some veggies with every meal. That you've done your best to have a healthy sleep environment and sleep well. After you did _everything_ in your power that you can do which only depends on you, then you can complain freely about how shitty things are even though you did everything in your power to feel better and happier.
But here's the thing, if you keep those good habits up no matter how hard it gets, despite life trying to do everything in it's power to ruin you, when you'll finally be free of those current uncontrollable aspects in your life, you'll be SO grateful to yourself, that you did your best to keep yourself healthy. Because then you can immediately resume a happier life and everything will be easier to do and you can focus on what you really want to do. And not like, oh I have nicer classmates now, but I still feel depressed because I never stick my head out of the door or exercise, eat poorly, and sleep poorly. Take it from me, took me like five extra years of being depressed after getting bullied for a couple of years until I snapped out of my denials and went to a psychologist who laid out the importance of proper health habits for me.
So that's basically how I manage to convince myself to go exercise even when I slept like shit and feel like garbage, thanks for reading