Use Psychology to Hack Your Workout
Excuses, excuses, excuses. You have a million of them, and, until you start using your mind in your favor, it’ll continue working against you. (How many times did you hit “snooze” this morning?)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the gold standard of talk therapy. It operates on the premise that your thoughts, behaviors, and emotions are all reliant on one another. For example, you’re working out at the studio and you start thinking, “This is rough! I’m dying!” cue the feelings of discouragement, right on time here comes the body following suit. You start giving up, then you use it as evidence that you’re not strong (insert your own thoughts here) enough, which leads you to feeling more discouraged, then you decide not to continue trying.
Can you see how straight forward this could be? Seeing this connection from a conceptual point of view is not difficult to do; however, taking this into consideration with yourself is a whole other beast. In order to do this, you must first be aware of your thinking patterns and their impact on you. Then you have to challenge those thoughts to make a change. (Ok, what thoughts are coming up for you now?? Think you can’t do this? Try me.)
Here are some common thoughts that disguise themselves as excuses and this is how we’re going to challenge them:
I’m not in shape enough to workout. - I bet you’re laughing at this statement because it’s absolutely preposterous… on paper. Let me be real with you though, I hear this all the time. I also went through this myself when I was opening the studio. I was 5 months postpartum. Of course I wasn’t in good shape. That thought haunted me and tried to get me to back out and discredit my ability many, many times. How are we going to challenge this? First off, lets label this: Predictive Thinking. Then let’s ask ourselves what evidence do we have to support that? The more we view the thought head on, the easier it is to see how flawed this thought is in the first place.
If I take a break, then I’m a failure. - I’m sorry, what?! Even the sun needs a break. Are you stronger than the sun? 🤣 This is classic black and white thinking. If I do blah blah blah, then I am blah blah blah. What about the gray area? What if you take a break for a drink of water and end up going harder than you were 2 minutes ago? See, didn’t think of that, did ya?
I should be using heavier weights. - The use of “should” and “must” statements is such BS. Who’s setting these standards for you? The only thing you should be doing is respecting your own needs in that moment. 👏🏼Stop 👏🏼 Setting 👏🏼 Unrealistic 👏🏼Standards 👏🏼 For 👏🏼 Yourself.👏🏼 You are just setting yourself up for failure. I know we are programmed to think that everything should be aesthetically pleasing and perfect at all times, but come on. That’s not real life. We all have days where we’re tired or feeling extra strong. Honor whatever it is you’re showing up with without judgment. I promise you no one else is paying attention to what you’re doing.
The list can go on and on, but we’ll save that for another day. Ready to get mentally strong? Let’s go. Ready to take the leap and try out the studio? Get 2 weeks of classes for $60.