For over 12 years, I have started every day with a workout or movement practice.
Most people assume that I am highly disciplined or that I love to exercise. Both are true, for the most part.
But here’s what’s also true: sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I don’t want to do a yoga practice, or a workout. I don’t even want to stretch or roll out.
That doesn’t mean that I’m not “motivated” on those days.
In fact, I have very strong motivation to exercise.
When I first started my “Fitness First” ritual, I wrote down a list of reasons why daily workouts were important for me and why it’s a non-negotiable.
My list includes reasons related to physical, mental, emotional, and cognitive well-being, as well as social motivators. It includes both long-term and short term reasons, both vanity reasons and practical reasons.
I set it up this way from the start to ensure that even when I lose connection with some reasons, I will still have other sources of motivation to rely on.
My motivation — my reasons — for exercise has remained unchanged for all these years. If anything, the list has expanded.
And yet, even with all of those “motives,” I still have days when I just don’t “feel like” exercising.
Motivation Isn’t Enough for The Heavy Lift
Here’s the truth: Task initiation is a heavy lift — especially for those of us with ADHD.
Starting is more complex than we admit; it requires alignment of several factors, including nervous system regulation, energy bandwidth, cognitive resources, and capacity.
Motivation can give us leverage that helps compensate for other depleted factors, but it can’t do the heavy lift on its own.
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