Do you get calls from telemarketers? You know. Someone from a call centre (just nearby) that rings at the most inconvenient time to offer you an absolutely unbelievable deal provided you sign up now.
Having had lots of these calls I’ve noticed that there is often a short delay from when I answer the phone until they respond. Sometimes I can hear some background noise and other times it is just silent.
What I do when I notice that delay, is hang up before they get a chance to start talking to me. Some people might think that is rude, but I don’t want to get caught up in the discussion of why I should buy their product.
I’ve realized that this same strategy works when that little voice inside my head starts trying to talk me out of doing my exercise session.
The key is to ‘hang up’ before that little voice starts to talk you out of doing what you planned to do. You have to act fast and not let it start talking. That means acting before you think about it. Once you start to think about it, the ‘voice’ gets a chance to speak. And it will invariably try to talk you into doing what you hadn’t planned to do.
Acting before you think might mean:
- getting out of bed straight away before you have a chance to feel how cold it is, or
- putting your exercise gear where it is the first thing you see when you get home, or
- stopping at the gym on the way home before that voice talks you into a watching the evening news instead.
The important thing is to get into action before you have a chance to talk yourself out of it. The hardest part about exercise is getting started. That’s because your little voice will try to talk you out of it. Once you’ve taken action, the voice realizes it’s failed and goes quiet until the next opportunity to undermine your fitness and self-discipline.
(I’m sure some of you are thinking – hang on…. David is a fitness specialist, surely he can’t wait to start his exercise every day. I can assure you that even the most consistent and dedicated exerciser will have days when that little voice inside is saying “not today,” “you can miss one session,” “go back to sleep, you’re tired.” Even regular exercisers have those thoughts some days. You aren’t the only one with them.)
