Discipline or Motivation ?

You need motivation, you need discipline… says every meme on social media and the words are banded about so much but which is more useful and in what instance

Motivation gets used often in the wrong terms as people talk about being motivated to go to the gym or motivated to get up early and go for a walk. The problem is that motivation is much like a muscle it fatigues and tires. think of motivation like the fuel to get the fire started but eventually the flames will die down.

Discipline is doing what you need to do even when you dont feel like doing it.It means even when no motivation is present you still get it done. Think about brushing your teeth… you dont need to get motivated to complete the task…. you are just disciplined enough to get it done !!!

So when it comes to fitness and the gym how does this all fit together to yield maximum results ?

We need both motivation and discipline…. when we are looking at starting the gym or a new fitness programme we need the motivation to get us through the initial stages until the behaviour starts becoming automatic and hard wired so we start doing them without thinking and without the need for motivation.

While we are at the new stages of any new behaviour motivation is important and being able to sync the behaviour with the outcome. if we are syaing why am i going to the gym today.. i dont feel like it .. and motivation is a little lacking we need to be able to link the goal we have in the moment to the action.

James clear in his book, atomic habits talks about identity habits and it is very true . When we identify with these actions as who we are motivation is not needed so much and the discipline of doing things because it is “who you are”.

So if we can move though MOTIVATION >>>> DISCIPLINE >>>> IDENTITY we have largely cracked it

Hope that helps give a brief summary of what and where these are useful in the gym / fitness sense

Lets Get social