The Ridiculous Reason We Don’t Exercise | Posture Hack #3

Recently, I asked why it is that so many people fail to exercise, and this is what you told me:

1. Overwhelming to find courage and time
2. Because results take too long
3. The busy-ness of life takes over
4. Too tired
5. Aren’t motivated enough
6. Too much effort
7. Too lazy
8. Seems like hard work

You gave many answers but I wanted to group these eight reasons together, because they demonstrate such an obvious theme. We lack time, it takes too long, we’re busy, tired, overwhelmed, unmotivated, lazy and it all just seems like hard work!

Today’s Posture Hack should solve this problem for many of you; because it’s ridiculous.

If you like to make lists or set goals as I do, then this will definitely help you. Even if you only think about setting goals but never do, this will help you too.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend at a high-school reunion. The same group of 10 women have remained friends since we were all in concert band together.  One friend was telling me about completing her PhD and that since this qualification, she no longer teaches (which she loved). She now commutes 3 hours a day, to the University of Toronto, to do a job she hates.

We started to talk about her daily schedule, and as you can imagine, with a dog, two children under 18, a job at the University and a 3-hour commute, there isn’t much time left for exercise.

She told me that perhaps she just needed to set a goal. I agreed, that that might be helpful. She then suggested her goal should be to run a marathon. So, did I celebrate the professed goal? Absolutely not!

My friend barely likes walking,  and now she’s going to set herself up for a massive letdown, because her goal is absolutely ridiculous. Ridiculously outlandish for her lifestyle and history with exercise.

ATTAINABLE

Most business coaches love to talk about attainable goals: “Make sure that it’s possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving, you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence.” Sounds reasonable right? It is reasonable; but what the heck are attainable goals, if you are starting from ground zero?! Half a marathon? 1-hour walk 4 days a week? 30-minute walk 3 days a week? You can see the problem here. Attainable goals are still somewhat cryptic.

RIDICULOUSLY SIMPLY

When I talk about goals with my posture pupils, I like to talk about ridiculously simply goals. So ridiculous in fact, it is almost impossible to fail.

Imagine this: You don’t drink water; you know you should, but you don’t – other than the 5 cups of coffee you consume daily. An attainable goal might be: Drink 1 litre of water a day; or 5 glasses a day; or 3 glasses a day.

A ridiculously simply goal might be to pour yourself 1 glass of water a day and bring it to bed to drink first thing on waking, before you brush your teeth. I’m guessing most of you would easily accomplish this goal.

HOW TO BEGIN

Choose your favourite exercise from one of the courses  you are enrolled on (or choose a favourite posture video of mine) and do it daily. And ONLY do that one exercise, every single day for one month.

Perfect your technique. Do it so well, that you start to notice parts of the exercise you might have glossed over. Maybe you notice you’ve been holding your breath. Or you notice you haven’t really thought about the exercise at all, because you’ve rushed through it, in an effort to complete a long list of exercises. Or maybe you notice you body melts into the movement even deeper than ever before, because you are so completely focused on your one daily exercise task.

Whatever you do notice about the exercise, after the first few days, week or month, I’d love to hear about it. What do you think about this week’s hack? What exercise will you choose? Will you commit to making your exercise goal ridiculously simple?

Hack #3: Make your posture exercise ridiculously simple

10,000 of you have enrolled in one of my Posture Exercise Courses . How many students do you think complete all the course lectures?

By the time most students get to the last section of  my best-selling course Posturecise (Level 1), you can see the active students have dropped by 70% and the number of students completing the lectures drops to roughly 15%. This isn’t some anomaly. This is exactly what I find across the board in all of my courses. In fact, this is pretty much the industry standard.

I get it! Life takes over, enthusiasm wanes and goals are long forgotten. Human nature. But I don’t like to see my own goals disappear, any more than I’m guessing you do. So I make my goals ridiculously simple and I believe that is why I’m a successful goal setter. Over time, my goals get juicier, because I’ve learned that I don’t let myself down.

REVIEW

Hack #1: Create the Environment (Design your surroundings)

Hack #2: Learn To Play (It shouldn’t be boring)