Fitness Fortune Teller
Imagine that you are at the circus. You walk around the fairground rides, food sellers are trying to sell you pink fluffy candy floss, as you walk past the lucky dip stalls you see a red tent that has a sign on it saying ‘Do to want to find out your fitness future? I have all the answers to what your fitness future will be’.
You’ve been meaning to do some exercise for a while so feel confident the fortune teller will give you the news you want to hear. You pull the curtain back and slowly step into a dark, candle lit room. You are instantly shocked with what you see, it’s yourself who is the fitness fortune teller. After gaining composure your curiosity gets the better of you and you decide to see what your future will bring. The fortune teller informs you that exercise will always be hard, that you will be the un-fittest person in any group and that you will always fail in exercise.
Ok I know I’m hardly Stephen King with my storytelling but when it comes to exercise most people, especially those new to exercise, are terrible at reading what their future experiences are going to be like. They put a set of expectations on exercise and these expectations often move them away from environments that will lead to so many benefits in their life.
The non-exerciser may be surprised to know that this is something that just about everyone experiences. Even as someone who has exercised their whole life I know that when I have a big run in my training diary I have to continuously battle my unrealistic expectations to get myself out the door.
So the question is, how can we not let this forward thinking limit us?
The first thing to do is identify the limiting thoughts you have when you are thinking about exercise. Once you have done this use this question: “How are these expectations holding me back and what is a healthier way for me to look at exercise environments?”.
At the end of the day the only way for you to understand the benefits of good exercise environments is for you to experience them first hand. Often the hardest step is the first step but if you can trust one thing, it’s that you can never trust the fitness fortune telling version of you.
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