May 27, 2021
By Paden Hughes
What is the real reason that you work out? Of all the humans out there, prioritizing their time and their dollars, and not choosing to prioritize fitness, you have made a different decision.
At some point in your life, you decided to put your money where your mouth was by prioritizing your health and fitness. So the question I have for you is: Why? What is your reason?
After being in this industry for over a decade, it ultimately seems to boil down to two kinds of core motivators. And we all know both of them.
All it takes is to look at one fitness billboard or one fitness magazine and see a few well toned bodies repping out, looking perfectly placed in a motion with an epic piece of equipment. And we instantly look at it and go, “Oh my gosh, they’re so sexy.”
Yes. Fitness is sexy. And one of the biggest reasons people work out is to feel that way. One of the biggest reasons people work out is to look good naked.
This is the classic time of year when people ramp up their commitment to fitness, simply because they tried on a bathing suit that left them demoralized in the fitting room. And that right there is the primary motivator for joining a fitness facility. The fear of not being attractive. The fear of what that means. The pain of what that means in your life can be a huge motivator for people to make different choices and get off the couch and go walk into a gym and say, “I’m taking control of this. I want to feel sexy in my body. And I want to look really good.”
What if I were to say that I don’t think there’s a problem with that attitude; but I would love to raise the bar a little bit to be beyond just looking good, because I love self-confidence. I believe that each one of us deserves to look in that mirror and see ourselves the way our kids see us, the way our significant others see us, and the way our mothers see us.
Beyond that first reason, what if your primary reason for working out evolved into feeling good?
What if that became the new norm, the new driver, the new motivation for you getting up in the morning?
I have a feeling that if we obsessed more about the feeling in our bodies, the bodies that house our souls, the bodies that we get to experience so much joy in life, we would start to like these beautiful handsome body that we’ve been given. What if we started with feeling good?
Here are some things that could dramatically shift. I think there would be a lot less shame because the outcome is a feeling, not an external visualization. I think there would be a lot more care going into the type of exercise that you would choose for your fitness, because certain types of fitness don’t leave you feeling good afterward. They kind of beat your body up. They can take it beyond an extreme point, and that might clue you into a different type of fitness because it would map differently to your goals.
I think if there’s one message I would love to extend to the Gymnazo community, it would be that feeling good is more valuable and will bring you more happiness in your life than looking good. There are way too many people out there who “look good”, but are miserable on the inside. The reality is what we look like visually very often does not translate into a healthy mindset and a balanced viewpoint.
And yet we still want to look good. So often, the reasons behind that stem from an insecurity around not belonging, not being lovable, and not being your best. We have so many judgments around the way our body looks and we’re programmed to be critical. But what if we change it? What if we get out of the aesthetic, if we get out of the way we present ourselves to the world around us and really get into our bodies and really think, what do I want from this body? What am I excited about? What do I want to pursue in this body? We would shift our mindset in a much more positive trajectory.
And yes, chances are that if you commit to a fitness routine, it will make you feel really good. Guess what the by-product is? You’ll most likely start to feel like you look better as well, but the longer lasting more altruistic motivator is less likely to be looking good naked, and more likely to be feeling good as you move your body.
And so my encouragement to you as we head into the summer months, when you’re wearing less clothes and more likely to look critically in the mirror, would be to shape up your mindset. The gold standard is not how you look but instead how you feel.
And when you feel good, things shape up faster than when you think you look good. Curious if that lands for you, or if you have an entirely different reason for working out. Email us. We would love to hear your thoughts.
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