Day (Lucky) 13 - What Motivates Us?

Poor food choices = YUM!

First off, whoa. This blog has had over 1500 views as of today. Unbelievable, considering it was conceived simply as a way to track workouts and remain accountable. Thanks for reading!

Today was a lovely day of sleeping in, lazing about, and not doing much of anything. I am between rotations and freedom feels so nice!

In the afternoon, I finally forced my lazy body into some semi-respectable clothes and walked through the incredible cold to Starbucks, where I made some very poor food choices and spent a lovely couple of hours enjoying the company of Eve, who is one of the funniest, most approachable fellow med students I have the honour of knowing. After our cozy gab-fest, Eve returned to her studying and I trudged over to the gym, where I spent an hour and a bit doing some low-intensity cardio (elliptical, stair-climber, and treadmill, for the record) to a pretty fantastic playlist that included the first track that got me really into hip hop.

Pedal faster, dammit!

The gym was empty, except for a few of us chugging away on the cardio equipment or in the weight racks, and I started thinking about what motivates people to come to the gym on a Saturday night.

I spent a large part of my masters thesis expounding on attribution theory. Attribution theory, first proposed by Bernard Weiner in 1980, gives us a way to talk about why some people persist on difficult tasks (even after failure) or choose to do things that are challenging, while others give up easily and are more likely to choose easy tasks.

The idea is that we attribute success or failure to reasons that fall along three basic dimensions - locus, stability, and controllability. All that jargon describes is that when we succeed or fail we have to decide whether it is due to factors inside us or outside us, factors that will change or will always be the same, and factors that we can alter or those that we have no control over. 

Newsflash: I like cats.

For example, if you try a twisted triangle and immediately fall over, you could decide that it happened because you are no good at yoga (a factor inside you), that you will never be good at yoga (a stable factor), and that you have no control over how well you do a twisted triangle. On the other hand, you could decide that it happened because the floor was slanted (a factor outside you), that you wouldn't have fallen at a different yoga studio with a not-so-slanted floor (in other words, that the factor that caused you to fail was unstable), and that you could go to that studio next time (the factor is controllable). The same type of framework works for describing our own successes.

It may seem like an academic exercise to imagine how we describe our successes and failures, but here's where it's relevant: If we decide that our failures are due to external, unstable, and controllable factors, we are motivated to persist. So if, for example, I can't run 5k and I decide it's because the weather is bad, that it won't stay bad forever, and that I can improve my ability to run in bad weather by training harder, I'll keep trying to run that 5k until I succeed. Attributing success to internal, stable, and controllable factors is also motivating. So when I finally run that 5k and decide that I succeeded because I have the ability, that I will always have the ability, and that I have the ability because I put in effort, I will be motivated to continue. There's an absolute wealth of research backing this up, and I will be sure to post some in the upcoming days and weeks.

So why do I show up to work out everyday? 

Katie described me as a "practiser" the other day, and I think that's accurate. I often choose things that are really difficult for me to do. Then I plug away at them. I don't get discouraged easily, and I think it has to do with believing that if I work hard enough, I can get better and be successful.

So I commit to going to the gym, knowing that external factors that kept me from getting to the gym have changed, and knowing that if I put in the effort to show up each day, I'll be successful. And that when I don't reach my fitness goals, I can always count on changing circumstances and the value of trying harder to get me to success.

Failure sucks, but at least it's temporary.

Next time you worry that you won't achieve your fitness goals, remember that external circumstances will change, and that your effort counts. And don't be afraid to try again.

This blog just got so damned touchy-feely.