Bodybuilding Motivation Starts with Right Now!
Let’s face it – on some days it can be difficult to feel motivated for bodybuilding. And to be sure, there are other days where your motivation to workout is not where you want it to be. This is particularly true for bodybuilders and avid weight lifters who have been hitting the stacks for a long time. In my experience, the struggle to workout has a lot to do with three facts: psychology, mood and attitude.
Because I know your physique is important to you and because I recognize that being a confident man means taking care of yourself, I am going to give you 5 bodybuilding motivation tips that borrow from the twin worlds of cognitive and mindfulness based psychology as a way of quickly changing your thought patterns and disrupting the cycle of excuses you have been using for skipping your workouts.
The information I will list here will challenge your current way of thinking and may at times be abrasive. But you came here for real change, right?
Below you will find a brief snapshot of both psychological constructs mentioned above, followed by 5 tips to help supercharge your motivation levels so that you will get your butt to the gym – right now!
I will avoid the tired and overplayed advice you already know about, which can be found on every body building website on the Internet. Instead, you are going to get the freaking real deal.
Are you ready? Let’s jump right in!
Bodybuilding Motivation and Psychology
The first thing we need to cover before going through the five bodybuilding motivation tips relates to psychology. If you want to understand why you are struggling with hitting your body building goals or worse, blowing off your workouts, you need look no further than your mirror.
Here is the deal – what you think about yourself directly relates to how you feel and by extension, what you do (or don’t do).
Bodybuilding Motivation: Changing the Tape
Cognitive psychology is all about how our thoughts impact our actions. It uses a here and now approach, meaning it focuses us on this very moment in time – as in right now. It is not concerned with the question “Why”.
Strike Out Why
Why you have been blowing off the gym or why you have been taking a halfhearted approached to bodybuilding isn’t important in cognitive psychology. You see trying to find out the answer to why is an exercise in futility, causing you to circle around the mountain forever and a day, which wastes time and gets you nowhere!
At the end of the day, does the “why” really matter? Does it get you to the gym? Does it create change? No! And so starting right now, strike the word why from your vocabulary.
Replace with What
Now that you have ridden yourself of why, I want you to focus on the word what. Example: What has been the result of your skipping the gym? What are you seeing when you look in the mirror? What parts of your body are you trying to build upon or improve?
Going forward, you will preface all of your thoughts about bodybuilding and getting to the gym with the word what. Using this approach, you will be engaging in mindfulness psychology, another here and now approach to motivation.
Combining both cognitive and mindfulness forms of psychology will empower you to change your mental tape and ultimately, help get your butt to the gym!
OK – now that you know how to reconstruct your thoughts, it is time to look at those 5 body building motivation tips. Notice every single suggestion contains the word what somewhere in the narrative.
Bodybuilding Motivation: 5 Tips
1. What is staring back at you in the mirror?
Take your shirt off and stand in front of the mirror. Do you like what’s staring back? What are you sick and tired of seeing that’s annoying to you? What do you like that you see? What can you do right now to build upon what you like or change what you don’t?
2. Smile and change your mood
What mood are you in? What would it be like to change your mood? While you are in front of that mirror from tip #1, look at yourself and smile. That is right, SMILE! As you smile at yourself, tell yourself you are in a good mood and happy – even if you have to lie to yourself. Smile therapy creates positive thoughts and changes your mood.
What faking it until you make it allows you is the ability to get to the gym and do that workout.
3. Purge your thoughts
What you have been thinking on this day up until this exact moment in time is irrelevant. What is important is what you are thinking right now. If are having negative thoughts about yourself or anything else, pinch your skin and tell yourself STOP. Purge your mind of everything that has happened before on this day and focus only on the moment. This tip may require you to engage in deep mindfulness for bodybuilding.
Once your thoughts are purged, think only about yourself at the gym, confidently lifting those weights! If you need a distraction from your negative, self-defeating thoughts drop down on the ground and bust out 25-pushups and mentally focus only on your muscles at that moment in time. What are you aware or? What can you do to build upon what you are feeling?
4. Leave your home or office right now
Now that you have purged your thoughts, you need to get moving. What is important is this very moment in time, meaning what you are doing to get out of your house or your office and to the gym.
Don’t think about anything else except the mental image of you lifting those weights. Do NOT give yourself permission to think about anything else. NO negative self-sabotaging thoughts about parking, equipment availability – none of it! Simply grab your gym bag and leave and do not think about anything else but lifting those weights. Keep smiling from point #2.
5. Workout mindfully
Now that you are at the gym, go about the business of working out BUT do so mindfully. Ask yourself what will your arm workout be like today? What will be different about your back workout? What are you feeling in your muscles with each lift? What level of intensity are you bringing to your workout? What will you do to change your halfhearted approach to bodybuilding to a more powerful, meaningful experience?
Bodybuilding Motivation Summary
Every single tip in this article is focused on creating positive self-talk and eliminating negative self-talk for bodybuilding. The concepts are deeply rooted in ancient wisdom, passed on from Zen masters of yesteryear and adapted to fit modern psychology.
I encourage you to spend some time examining your thoughts and eliminating any patterns of negative self-talk. Focus on practicing the 25-affirmations we should say to ourselves each day! It’s like this dude so listen up – you can build the body of your dreams and transform yourself. In order for this to happen, you must believe you are worthy happiness. Most important, you must believe in yourself.
I am including a book recommendation entitled, The Art of Mental Training to help you become more centered on mindfulness as a tool for creating motivation for body building. If you need visual stimulation, look around this website or visit the Men’s Culture Pinterest page. Feel free to bookmark this page.
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