Going in the Opposite Direction

Have you ever had those days or weeklong periods where you are very productive and then you burnout so than the next few days or weeks feel worse than your normal productive state?

Why does this happen and why so many times? Well, it's actually simple, you started wrong. Which is normal considering you're starting.

The first schedule that you do in anything will likely never work out, going into it expecting failure is one thing but understanding why it didn't work for you is another.

I'm going to break down why anything you try doing tends to take a halt or make you dislike activities that are actually healthy and good.

Expectations

First off when you start something, do you have the end goal in mind? Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds by the of summer or bench 100ibs (45kg) by the 3-month mark. Understand that this will likely end in failure.

Stick to short term goals if that hasn't worked for you. People often set long goals especially when they want to change something completely. Maybe they're extremely overweight and they're focusing on their big goal. So, I recommend combining both.

Use small goals as small achievements to boost momentum and pride that you're completing something. This will give you the motivation to want to do more and make the goals seem more manageable.

Keep in mind that all small goals won't end in succession. You may have set the bar too high or even too low.

As for the larger goals, hang a picture of your goal, your ideal physic or remind yourself daily what you're doing this for. Use it to get you in the mindset of what you're doing.

If you find any successful person, the biggest things that motivated them was having a why.

If you're working out, you're probably getting tired and then just stop. I ask you to do one more rep or set of something easy. and during that set or rep, look at that picture or writing and remind yourself your brain why you're doing this.

Your brain wants to protect you, they see working out as hurting your muscles because of the physical struggle that you're putting yourself in. They want to stop to protect you however you are doing this to protect you.

So, make sure your goals are clear to your brain to be more consistent with your thinking.

Anti-Goals

I touched on this briefly in my "Power of Hate" blog, but I want to dive a little deeper. First, the definition, an anti-goal is something you want to strive away from, keyword away. Goals are something you want to strive towards, anti, the opposite.

I recommend reading the Power of Hate blog that explains the brief fundamentals of it

But why are anti-goals good? Well, this is another thing I explain in the Power of Hate, but for those who haven't read it explains how people remember more traumatic experiences than good ones.

I mentioned that you can likely think of more tragic events rather than ones that have helped people.

How can we use this? Well, anti-goals. Because our brains remember things that are bad, unfortunate, dangerous, or something that we strongly hate, we can use this to set and eliminate things we don't want to do. Hate lazy people?

Well, it will be easier to not be lazy now, even easier than you think, as long as you continue to remind yourself, which ties back into my previous statement.

Burnout

Nobody likes being burnt-out. You're constantly in that state of wanting to do more but literally not being able to. This is where momentum completely dies out and you restart from level 1. They say to never not work out for 3 days in a row.

That should be the baseline. With being burnt-out, you might have not workout for even a couple weeks.

Avoiding burnout is one of the essential things you need to avoid. The number one thing is consistency.

I get it, you want to get out of your state as fast as possible, but you'll realize at a certain point that you are proud of progress comparing yourself to your old self and that's the part you need to get at.

So, you can set goals however make it, so they're aligned with expectations. If you even start to feel unmotivated, fatigued, or drenched for a couple days, then slow down. This will only make it worse if you burnout.

Conclusion

It's better to have weeks of consistent mid days than a few weeks of all out work. It doesn't take long to gain weight again or lose muscle or even forget something you learned.

Build those habits, set manageable small goals and remind yourself what you truly want and don't want to do and that'll be your key to success.