The Dance of Motivation and Habit - What Everyone Working On Themselves Needs To Know

Motivation and habit.

Two areas or principles I should say, in the world of all things health. Whether you are into working on your nutrition, fitness, sports, or really any aspect of your individual potential.

Yet so many get it wrong…

Not in understanding what each of these things entail or their definition, but instead in the way they view them in the context of their goal/s.

The way that they put weight on one vs the other. 

This is what I want to explain to you: the ballad of goal achievement. 
The dance of motivation and habit. 
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In this blog, I will detail a saying that is so true yet often forgotten as well as break down in simple terms what you need to focus on when it comes to the art of motivation and habit building. 

Motivation 101

Motivation is an emotion.

It has ups and downs. Peaks and troughs. Peaks and valleys. Good times and s**t times. It’s a rollercoaster of a ride.

Yet so many people put such big emphasis on motivation and place a heavy reliance on it being the savior of one's goals and success.

You can’t do this to yourself and the reason is simple….

If you rely on motivation, you are leaving your results to chance because you can not truly dictate your motivation all the time.

Sure, you can get yourself “pumped up” and “motivated” but you will have times of de-motivation when things are simply harder.

This can last a day or even weeks so it’s not enough to try and have motivation catch your falls.

You need more…and that is where habits come in.

Habits 101

Good ol habit of behaviour.

Habits are the guardrails of one’s results and success. I truly believe this, and that is why I literally use this saying with clients.

Habits underpin the efforts we put in and enable us to keep on the straight and narrow (at least more successfully than we would otherwise).

So why is it that people get it so wrong? Why is it that habits get pushed to the wayside as far as our efforts go?

Well, there could be a variety of reasons, but none is less common than the fact that we all in some way or another, strive for quick fixes to our apparent problems.

We seek the easy so we don't think about anything beyond the pure result itself. Leaving out the pieces of the puzzle in place that frame our picture (imagine if you made the middle of a puzzle but then left the edges - the image would show, but wouldn’t be worthy of display, and would get ruined easily without the structure). 

Focus on building new habits, reinforcing current ones, and fixing old ones. Do it early, do it right. You will thank yourself for it.

As the saying goes...

Something recently spurred on this blog post. 

I was recently in my gym and one of their aspirational posters reminded me of this very true saying that too many forget or don’t understand.

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”

And isn’t it the truth! 

This is the dance of motivation and habit.

Motivation has it’s place but you can’t rely on it fully. Habits have their place but they aren’t always easy nor intuitive.

The dance is what matters and enabling both to effectively guide you forward. 

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Recapping It up!

So now you know that habits are key, motivation can’t solely be relied on, and both have an important role to play.

Your goal now is to learn how to do this dance and see better results for it.

Ready To Do Things Properly?
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Looking forward to taking out the guesswork and helping you “figure out this nutrition thing”. 

Sports Dietitian and Coach Aleksa 

Brisbane Dietitian and Nutritionist