Training Sustainability
We’re a month into 2023 and a week into the Year of the Rabbit. Soon everyone who used either of these events to launch new routines and habits to improve their lives will be experiencing major challenges to their motivation and positive momentum. We all get different mileage out of our motivation but we are all the same when it comes to motivational challenges. We all experience them. The great thing about challenges to motivation is that every challenge creates an opportunity.
It is important to recognize that, for many people, motivation is a binary proposition. I am either motivated or I am not. If my go to response to being motivated is to engage and my go to response to being unmotivated is to withdraw, this binary response traps me in an endless cycle of mediocrity. By choosing to respond in a non-binary way, I create opportunity.
Rather than approaching lack of motivation as an excuse to withdraw, treat it as a call to action. If I was motivated on January 1st to implement positive change, why am I having difficulty only a month later? More than likely the plan I executed on January 1st, while generating great benefit and excitement for the first few weeks, is not sustainable over the long term. No plan can possibly serve me over the long term adjustment-free. As my life carries on, nothing remains the same. I am a different person today than I was yesterday so what motivates me today may not motivate me tomorrow. Change is a fact of life.
Mastery in anything requires commitment and clarity of purpose. Take nothing for granted, especially your goals. There are reasons why you choose the goals you have chosen. If you keep those reasons in front of you, your goals retain their value. If your goals remain valuable, your plan can always be adjusted to bring you closer to your goals perpetually. The sustainability of your plan is always in flux so you must always be ready to change your plan to meet the needs of your goals.
Now the big ‘IF’. If your plan is no longer sustainable, you must answer the question: WHY NOT? If you cannot answer that question, the reason why your plan is not working is because you are not following it. Changing your plan without understanding why your current plan is failing is the equivalent of painting your house because your car is low on oil.
Jeff Brinker
