We have all reached that point in our lives where we say to ourselves, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and the task at hand is delayed day by day till we finally come to terms with the fact that we might actually never come around to achieving it. If you have gone through this then you know that you are not alone.

We tell ourselves many things in order to get our motivation going, stuff such as, “I’ll feel healthier,” or, “I’ll lose weight,” “I’ll have better stamina,” “I’ll have significantly less health issues as compared to someone who does not workout.” But let’s be honest, even with all these reasons we still can not find the motivation to get out of bed and go for a run.

One reason is because motivation doesn’t just come to us when we want it, we can’t just summon our motivation as if it were a genie in a lamp (because that is simpler, right?). We think it’s motivation that gets us going and it is to a certain extent but what about when we don’t have motivation, what do we do then?

That’s when we learn to set our habits in place, what our habit needs from us is to set an unambitious goal, something that does not require too much effort. We often set high standard goals such as, I’ll run every day for one hour and realistically speaking that will not be sustainable in the long run.

You will run for two to three days and then quit, why? Because you ran out of motivation and that is when you can bring your highly ambitious goal down all the way and reach a point where you tell yourself, “I will just step on to the track and walk for a minute,” or “I will lay out my mat and just stand on it.”

Days where you do not feel it, you should do the minimum amount because something is always better than nothing. That doesn’t sound as glamorous as being a consistent runner or swimmer or yogi but exercise is not always as glamorous as we usually make it out to be. It is hard work that requires willpower and willpower also needs practice, it requires us to do something which is better than nothing.

So run every day for a minute, do one push up every day, one sit up every day, one lap of a swimming pool every day and one stretch on the yoga mat every day. One minute everyday until it feels automatic because that’s what habits are, automatic actions and exercise should be a habit.