How many times have you said to yourself – if I could just get motivated I could lose weight, exercise more, go back to school, get out of debt or get a job I love?

Life would be great if we could just get motivated right?  Well the good news is motivation is internal.  And that’s the bad news too – nobody else can do it for you.  When you decide to commit to making yourself Priority 1 and taking ownership of your self-care, happiness and success you become responsible for the decisions you make.  And that’s where a lot of us slide down that slippery slope because our BS gets in the way.  Our belief systems I mean. 

There are 3 secrets to the art of motivation. 

1. You must BELIEVE that what you do matters. 
2. You must TRUST that after you decide to do something it will happen
3. You must COMMIT to stay with it and not give up until you get your result.

For many years I had no trouble getting motivated to start something.  I got a bright idea and excitement set right in.  I made big plans.  But soon after the initial rush began to fade, so did my commitment.  The minute I began to doubt that I could make the changes I wanted to make, I started down that slippery slope.  I lost confidence in myself and my desire to stick with it.  My motivation mojo evaporated into thin air.

Life happens when you’re making other plans and the demands on us can make it seem almost impossible to find a way to change your habits.  When you’re overburdened and overwhelmed, how do you find the motivation to take care of the dishes much less yourself?  

That’s why I’m a believer in NOT adding another goal to an already full plate.

You start by looking at your “BS” – and how those belief systems are holding you back from what you want.  They’re barriers to creating your soul-inspired life.  They manifest as fear of success, feeling alone, feeling guilty or ashamed, low self-esteem, lack of focus or fear of failure.  And they can drag us into a downward motivational spiral. 

But even that’s not the whole story.  Underneath that BS is the BIG BS that’s often the root of many of the others.  It’s about self love.  It’s not ACCEPTING and LOVING yourself right where you are.  When your inner critic starts in on you, do you minimize the importance of who you are and what you came here to do?  Do you feel that what you do doesn’t matter or won’t change anything?  That’s what will knock motivation right out of you.  It will defeat your spirit before you even start. 

Grab a piece of paper and write out something you’d like to motivate yourself to do.  Then write down all the barriers to achieving that goal.  Can you see how motivation can’t help you until you bust through those barriers?  You just keep hitting the wall until you know how to get through it.

The truth is, nothing happens until something moves, as Einstein sagely observed. Motivated people aren’t any different from you – they are successful because they believe in themselves – trust in the process – and commit to just do it – even if they don’t want to.

Please believe that everything you do matters.  You matter.  Believe you deserve to have health, energy, and abundance in every area of your life!  Your future is not somewhere beyond you – it is inside you!  Decide what it is you truly want to do for you – create a plan and then take little actions every day.  Accept yourself right where you are and begin to believe – trust – and commit to loving yourself enough to live the life of an on-fire fitchick!

The Japanese word “kaizen” is the process of making simple, small improvements consistently that over time will change your life. It’s a powerful yet simple way to transform every area of your personal and professional life. It’s how you create a support system that automatically aligns you with your goals and makes creating “I-Space” natural and organic.

The beliefs that we hold in our lives and in the work we do control all of our decisions, and therefore our future. One of the most positive “BS” (belief systems) we can adopt is that in order to succeed and be happy we have to be constantly improving, growing and expanding.

The Japanese understand this principle well. They understand that tiny improvements made daily begin to create quantum results at a level that most people can’t imagine. They have a saying “If a man has not been seen for 3 days, his friends should take a good look at him and see what changes have befallen him.” Interestingly, we have no English equivalent for the word “kaizen.”

This simple organizing principle can make a huge impact in your life. Most of us never feel secure or happy for long because we are always worried about losing something – our jobs, our health, finances – ourselves! The only way to truly be at ease comes from knowing that every day you’re a commitment to moving forward in your life in some way. You’re not tolerating or maintaining – you’re improving. It doesn’t become overwhelming because those improvements are small. Baby steps. But very powerful. Because I’m blessed (and cursed) with a curious nature, I realized I’ve been doing this naturally most of my life and never realized there was a name for it.

Remember the saying “A year from now you will have wished you started today?” Small improvements are believable and therefore achieveable (Anthony Robbins). It’s always your “BS” that will motivate you – either toward what you want or away from it.

Whenever I do personal training work with a client, I pay particular attention to the way they carry their body. For many of us (myself included) you can see the how we compartmentalize our mind and body just by the way we hold ourselves. Some of us tend toward the rounded shoulder slump. Others fold in on themselves with the “Eeyore” posture. The mental attitude is almost always reflected in how the body moves.

There’s actual intelligent life below your neck if you choose to look for it. And when you tap into inhabiting your body in a new way you find out surprising things. For instance, have you ever tried a form of movement you thought was beyond you (like interpretive dance or martial arts) and discovered that when you weren’t preoccupied with the static external appraisal of yourself you experienced an amazing internal joy at just moving through space? That kind of movement awakens your personal inner athlete. Maybe not the one who wants to run a marathon or rappelle a rock wall – but the one who craves expression through movement.
I don’t believe it’s possible to educate your bind and leave your body out of it – they are one. (That might have something to do with the fact that I’m a distinctly “gross motor” gal.) But if mental intelligence is our ability to acquire and apply knowledge from our mind, then physical intelligence is our body’s ability to look at our physical and emotional landscape and then apply its knowledge (in the form of strength, timing, flexibility and power) to respond. That’s a pretty cool message if we’ll take time to listen to it.

Physical intelligence will spill over into other areas of your life too – like your relationships and your work. When you push yourself to take flight, to move, it will encourage you to push past your comfort zone, try a new approach, get up when you fall.
You develop new instincts and new ways of looking at the world and at yourself. Instead of being preoccupied with your body type and your weight, believe that you are more than the sum of your parts. Begin to move and get in touch with your body – she has a few pretty amazing things to teach you.