Finding your Purpose for Fitness!

Most people starting a fitness program seek to find motivation externally through a program, device, coach or trainer.    Unfortunately this never works!    Motivation to get through the hard work necessary to change your lifestyle so that you can achieve and maintain higher levels of fitness and health has to come from within you!

No coach or trainer can motivate – they can only help you find your motivation or purpose.      If you talk to 100 different people starting a fitness program and ask them what their goals are you will hear some very consistent responses such as “lose weight and tone up”, “get ripped”, sleep better, have more energy, etc.    At the end of the day goals are important but being crystal clear on why they are important to you personally is what is going to keep you on track to actually achieve those goals.

The science of human motivation can be summed up in one simple acronym:    A. M. P. which stands for:

Autonomy – “The quality of being self-governed.”    Or put another way people want to be in control of their lives and make their own decisions about what they do!   Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time with a two year old has heard them scream “I do it MYSELF!”     As funny as that sounds to an adult trying to help a two year old put on their shoes or do something else it is really just an honest expression of the drive to have autonomy.     It is not just two year olds who feel that way!

Mastery – is an extension of the desire for autonomy because to master something is the ultimate expression of autonomy and being in control of one’s life!     This is one of the reasons that fitness can be such a powerful catalyst for overall lifestyle changes.    Learning how to master a movement or activity is the epitome of mastering a key aspect of our lives!

Purpose – as powerful as the drive for Autonomy and Mastery is Purpose or Meaning is even more powerful.       The definitive work on this subject is probably “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl.    This author suffered through the concentration camps with all their horrors including the deaths of his entire family.     He survived because he became focused on the need to survive to tell the story to the world and this gave him purpose to withstand this incredibly challenging experience where thousands of others simply gave up and died.   Without finding this purpose he never would have lived!   He went on to create a specific type of therapy he called “Logotherapy” or meaning therapy where the focus is helping people find their source of meaning or purpose.

One of the universal truths about human beings is that finding a clear purpose is the key to success in reaching any goal.   You must be clear on why it is important to you or you will quit!       Your purpose or meaning is personal to you.    For one person their purpose may be that they want to get fit because they just went through a divorce and lack confidence in their appearance while for another they want to get fit to be a role model for their children so their children can grow up healthy and happy unlike they did themselves.