M to the O to the VATION!!! MOTIVATION, how do we get it & keep it?!?!

Well now that we've been through my "how'd you get here" story its time to get down to the meat & potatoes, the nitty & the gritty of this whole health & fitness thing and wShat better place to start than at the beginning which is MOTIVATION!!!

• How do I get motivated to start?
• What do I do to stay motivated?
• When the going gets tough where am I going to draw my motivation from? 
• Now that I've reached my goal what's going to motivate me to continue?
• and the list goes on. . . ..

So lets just jump in with figuring out how to even get motivated and get this ball rolling. Well one thing you will learn about me is I have a MILLION sayings, some that are originally mine and others I have borrowed from people & places. My FAVORITE saying pertains to our current topic about MOTIVATION. . . during this journey regardless if you're single, married, have kids, no kids, employed, unemployed or any other category or definition you can find to describe yourself you need to adopt the principle of

SELF FIRST NOT SELFISH!!!

So lemmi explain what that means and what it has to do with our nemesis Motivation. No matter what you're trying to accomplish in life be it better health & fitness, a better job, college education, more money, peace at work / peace at home, happiness and anything else you can name you have to start with SELF!!  If you focus on yourself and the goals at hand and take care of yourself you can better accomplish the goals and tasks that lay before you. For example . . . you want to be able to provide better for yourself and your family. In order to do that you may need a more education to get a better job to make more money to ultimately take care of your family. Well you can't do that if you don't focus on yourself and accomplish the goal of working towards that better education which will in turn put you in the proper position for the better job, which will ultimately result in more money to support your family. Well its the same thing with your health & fitness. It doesn't matter if your goal is a big one like being healthy for your kids and your family so you can be around longer to enjoy them or a bit more personal like fitting in that dress (women) or that suit (men) for a function, or to look good for a reunion or upcoming event you at least have a starting point. Now that you have the reasoning and the goal in mind you have to attack it and make it come to life. In order to do that you have to focus a bit more on YOURSELF!! Again this is NOT selfish, this is self first, because if YOUtake better care of YOU in whatever facet that may be you can now take better care of others and those important to you.

Now I'll share with you what initially motivated me. When I became preggers I was already heavier than what I thought I was and I was floored. Unfortunately the pregnancy weight gain was inevitable and in the end I was in a place I really didn't want to be. After having Kyndal I was THRILLED to have such a beautiful baby and to be a mom but ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED with the way I looked. Much to my dismay I didn't immediately do anything about it and then that day came . . . I saw a picture of me and my stomach was so big my arms rested on it as if it was a shelf. WHAT?!? IS THIS REAL OR IS THIS A CRUEL JOKE?!? That's when I decided "The buck STOPS here"!!! It was time for me to hold myself accountable and responsible for where I currently find myself and do something about it. So my initial motivation was partially vain . . . I wanted to look at myself in the mirror and like what was looking back at me. I no longer wanted to be overweight. I no longer wanted to rock myself to get out of a car, to not be able to roll around on the floor with Kyndal and play without my knees hurting, to be able to go up and down the stairs in my house without being labored. And that was all it took to get my ball rolling.

So what will it take to get you MOTIVATED and get your ball rolling?!?! There are a million things that you can use to motivate you to get started but one of the easiest things we can do is first determining what the ULTIMATE goal will be, then once we have that lets break it down into several smaller goals and we will use each one of them as our MOTIVATION. As you start accomplishing the smaller goals your mojo  gets going and that keeps you energized to move on to the next goal then the next and before you know it you've reached what seemed to be the impossible the unreachable final frontier.

Now that we're motivated to get started "What do we do to stay motivated??" Stay tuned for the next blog as we tackle our next step to maintain our MOTIVATION. . . .Until then talk to ya later

KQ