BECOMING THE NEGOTIATOR
- By loramarie03
- 12 June, 2012
- 15 Comments
A few weeks ago, I was a guest poster over at Blogitness a few weeks ago where I talked about becoming a morning runner. One of the strategies I mentioned was giving yourself a few minutes to recharge when you wake up, particularly if you are tight with the snooze button. My few minutes of checking my email has turned into surfing Facebook, checking the weather and snoozing between all of that… which means I waste a lot of time. This morning I successfully got out of bed three minutes after the alarm went off. Progress!
With that in mind, I was thinking about how you keep your motivation up — whether its finding ways to procrastinate your workout (seriously, who even posts stuff on Facebook at 6 a.m.?!) or even justifying skipping altogether. Here are some of my negotiating strategies to get myself out there:
- Only one mile… Convincing myself that I’ll do a shorter workout is one of the best ways I’ve learned to get myself out there. And once I’m out there, I can’t help but do a little extra. For instance, I’ll tell myself I’ll do the short loop around Prospect Park… but once I get into the park, I’ll do my usual loop because cutting it short just means I’ll miss my favorite part.
- Tomorrow I’ll let myself… Part of my negotiating process is to do a trade-off. If I do some stride-outs during this run, I can cut out on of my arm workouts or tomorrow will be a shorter run are some of the ways that I get myself motivated on those days when fitness just doesn’t sound appealing (I think we all have those days… even if you are Meb or Kara).
- I’ll do some now, more later… This has become one of my favorites in the burpee challenge. I tell myself that I’ll just do some now and finish up with it later. So, I’ll say — once I hit 25 burpees, I’m a little over half so that means I can finish up the ones later tonight. Usually, by time I get to that number, I’m already in it so I just finish it off.
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Are you a morning or night person? What are some of your best tips for keeping yourself motivated?
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Morning person here! I am like you though and have to give myself time to wake up. I web have coffee…it's worth the extra time for me. I also run in the evenings but it's usually a harder effort for me.
Oh you are so lucky!! What I would give to be a morning person… haha
I am exactly like you! When I don't feel like running I will tell myself I will run 5 miles (when I really have like 8-9 miles) and once I hit 5 I usually feel good and think I have less then a 10K left so I keep going. Same thing applies to cross training which is really hard to motivate myself to do sometimes. I am the queen negotiator sometimes.
That’s so funny! It’s insane how powerful the mind is
Congrats, Alysia! Also, I’m currently trying to convince myself to get to the gym. I’m just so tired today because of repeated lack of sleep over a week of sleepless nights.
Oh no!! I hope you find some time to sleep!
Great tips! Honestly I am bffs with my snooze button. It is really hard for me to wake up in the mornings. But I have found that giving myself extra time to lounge a little helps. It’s so true that the hardest part is just walking out the door
I too always end up doing more than I set out to do.
I get so jealous of my fiance because he's one of those people that gets up from sleeping and is bouncing around with all this energy… he thinks I'm nuts that it takes so much effort to wake up! Hahah.
Haha I do the SAME thing! Such mind games we play with ourselves. If I he up early to run before work I always say just go out and get at least 2 miles in and that gets me moving and then like you said I always feel good enough to do some more!
I used to be a morning person then I went to college and worked a job where I started at 4AM and that went to crap. I’ve been getting up early one day a week to do a morning run but it’s torture. I agree with giving yourself time to wake up, one of my worst runs was where I went straight from bed to to the street. Playing mind games certainly help like “finish this run and you can have a piece of chocolate for breakfast” haha
Holy cow, what job was that?!
Definitely an evening person when it comes to running. I probably do 80% of my running in an evening – just because it's more convenient – with kids it's hard to get out in the morning. Problem is when you are so used to running and training in an evening when you race early in the morning it takes a bit for your body to become accustomed! Well that's my excuse anyway!
Fleur xx
Yeah that definitely makes sense!! It takes the body a bit to wake up when it's not used to it
I'm still learning from you, while I'm trying to achieve my goals. I certainly love reading all that is written on your site.Keep the stories coming. I loved it!
Thanks and thanks for reading!