Improve Your Health With Why Not What

In order to keep focussed on your goal to live a fit and healthy life, simply knowing what you need to do is not enough. You need to know why.

Unlike animals which are driven simply to survive, humans crave more from life. If our only goal of exercising and eating well is to survive, without an answer to the question of why we want to survive (i.e. our purpose), we will quickly be discouraged and lose motivation.

In his 2014 Ted Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, Simon Sinek illustrates the importance of finding our why in order to create action. Most of us decide our what e.g. “I want to lose weight”, and then work out the how e.g. “I will start exercising”. However, this external goal of weight loss is not going to be enough to keep us focussed. We need to go deeper and find our internal motivation, our why. Why do you want to lose weight? What is it that motivates you to get out of bed on a cold, dark morning to attend your 6am Fit My Day training session?

Finding your why can be the encouragement you need to change things, even if you are feeling resistant to change. Let’s imagine for a moment that you really don’t like to exercise. You have started a new job that is quite physical and you are exhausted by the end of the day. You’re not really worried about your fitness, but you do love your job and know that if you had more energy you would be coping much better. Your what is to improve your fitness. If you start an exercise program with fitness being the focus, you will quickly lose interest as fitness is not that important to you. Your why is to have more energy and be better at a job you love. With this internal goal as your focus, your motivation will be much greater.

Your why needs to be linked to your core values i.e. the things in your life that are important to you. Your core values will drive your why and give you motivation when things get tough. In the above example, the core value was being successful in your work, which in turn drove the why. Another common goal in the area of health and fitness is weight loss. Weight loss is the what. We need to drill down and find out the why. Why do you want to lose weight? Why would it matter if you didn’t?

Your why will evolve and change over the years. My why to exercise and eat well has not always come from a healthy place. There was a time when my core values focussed a little too much on aesthetics. My why was a desire to achieve a body that would be suited to my dance and performance aspirations, which, not surprisingly, did not go well.

Today, one of the whys that motivates me to exercise and eat well comes from a core value of relationships. I know without a doubt that when I am feeling physically and mentally strong, I am a better mum, wife, friend, daughter and trainer. I enjoy training for different running events, but the goal of the event alone may not be enough to get me out of bed on the cold, dark mornings. The knowledge that when I get back from my run I will be in a happier mood for my family and friends for the rest of the day is the why that keeps me on track.

Work out your why and write it down. Then, when the alarm clock goes off at 5:30am, you know the only choice you have is to get out of bed and train.