People have feelings too

One of the biggest reasons people don't workout is that they don't often feel like working out.

Which would explain the abundance of articles online with headlines like “X number of ways to motivate yourself,” online.

Of course, if you don't feel like working out, the question to ask isn't how to get yourself to workout. It’s how to get yourself to feel like working out to begin with.

It’s a completely different problem, with a entirely different solution.

Because, of course, feeling isn’t logical. It’s emotional.

Maybe you don’t feel like changing into your workout clothes. Maybe your comfortable and don’t like to feel cold (I don’t). So, what do you do? Take a 10 minute walk and heat up.

Or say you’re feeling lethargic. Have you eaten lunch? Have you eaten at all? Did the carbs in your sub make you tired? How would you feel if you had eaten a salad, instead?

Maybe you don’t like going to the gym. Or working out outside. Maybe you feel self-conscious (even if you’re too stubborn or strong-willed to admit it).

Or consider the 5pm blues. Maybe you need a nap. A 3pm siesta. Or cold brew after lunch. You name it.

There are plenty of reason why you might not feel like doing the thing you know you want to do. The question to ask is, what can you do now to make the task not so dreary?

Thinking about decisions in terms of both logical—I want this because it will lead to X—and emotional—I’d feel more like doing this if I did Y (or removed Z)—ways, is a useful way to think about how to get ourselves to do much of anything.

Because when we don’t do the things we know we’d like to do (or need to do), it might not always be that we explicitly don’t want to do them. It might be a sign that we simply haven’t created the conditions to make feeling like doing it probable, or possible.