Everything we do in our lives is connected to a purpose.
Connecting our actions, habits, and hobbies to our values helps our lives to flow in alignment with something greater than ourselves.
That’s why when runners begin to struggle with running motivation, my biggest piece of advance is to remember your why.
Get Clear About Your “Why”
The most important thing you can do to ramp up your motivation is to get clear on your “why”. Why do you want to run? Why is it important to you?
If you don’t know, it will be easy to quit when times get tough. If you don’t know your “why”, it’s hard to understand why you’re really running in the first place.
If you don’t know why you’re doing something, why would you do it at all?
If you know why you’re running and you stay focused on that, it will be much easier to keep going when you inevitably run into roadblocks.
How Can You Find Your Why?
The first step in getting started with running is getting clear on your goal. In order to get clear on your goal, it is very important that you get clear on and remember your why.
Why?
Why do you want to run?
Why is it important to you?
Why do you want to add running as a habit in your life?
Dig Deeper
If you dig deep, you will find the core reason that you want to do this. You will find your driver.
This could require asking “why” a few times before you really narrow it down to the true reason.
The motivator that makes you a little bit emotional and taps deeply into your core values.
Finding your “why” requires you to get honest with yourself. It can challenge you to dig deep and to find the true reason.
You want to tap into your intrinsic motivation and not just surface-level motivation.
On the surface, you may initially have a why that is something like “I want to run to lose weight”, but if you dig deeper, you will find a much more impactful reason.
If you ask yourself “Why do I want to lose weight?” the reason might be because I want to be confident.
Then you may ask “What would confidence do?”, and the reason might be “Because I want to feel good about myself and do things I know I’m capable of”.
Spend some time with your “why” and analyze it. Define it, outline it, and write it down. Dig deeper.
Visualize your “why” and emotionally connect to it.
What Is Your “Why”?
So now, new runner, my question for you is what is your why?
I challenge you to dig deeper and ask yourself “why” a few times until you get to that something that is very, very important to you.
Remember Your Why
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3 Comments
Awesome post. I truly believe that the “why” for anything we want to accomplish or do on a regular basis is the KEY!
My brother is a runner, I’ll definitely share this with him.
This is so important for running and for anything else you are doing with passion in your life. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!