What motivates YOU?

It's a pretty simple question, but possibly one we don't ask ourselves enough. What motivates you to achieve a goal? What motivates you to workout? Yea, you want to be healthy, fit, skinny, etc....but what keeps you going when you do not see the results you were hoping? What motivates you to push yourself to the limit?

This past week my husband got me Nike + Training for the kinect on Xbox 360. You start out by putting in height, weight and age, picking a trainer, and then doing a fitness assessment. It then gives you a fitness and athleticism score (which shows where you have room to improve). You will also put in what you want to work on (strength, power, toning, etc) and how many days a week you want to workout. It then creates a 4 week program for you! That first day just doing the fitness test was quite brutal for me! You see yourself next to this animated trainer and I felt slow and unfit. While doing high knees and struggling with having enough space in my living room for the drills, I exclaimed to my husband, "I don't think I like this!" By the end though, I was out of breath and sweating more than I had since my soccer days! It was barely ten minutes! I decided that all though it was brutal, I would stick with it. As you do the drills, it really feels like having a trainer with you. Since the kinect sees your whole body, it tells you where to correct your form and motivates you when you are doing it right. Besides, there was a workout regimen made just for me!

So what keeps you motivated? Here are some things I have found that motivate me. If you have found something that works for you, please share!.

-Tracking Goals, a basic idea. On the wii fit I can weight myself and set a goal on how much weight I want to lose and have made a routine of checking my weight every morning. This can sometimes discourage or motivate me when I see different fluctuations in my weight.

-To Do Lists, I am a big list person! This is more for every day things. My habit of creating lists really developed in college at times when I felt overwhelmed by all the assignments, project and tests I had to do. By creating a list, and at times even a daily schedule, it helped to make things feel more manageable.

-Competitiveness, This is something that I am trying to rekindle within myself, but only to a certain degree. When I was younger, I used to be super competitive and I could really be a soar loser at times. When I would lose, I could easily become frustrated at others and myself. Let's just say I would lose my cool. I would also become less aware of certain things and sometimes cause physical injury to myself, which was embarrassing to say the least. But I am now realizing that my competitive spirit was part of the reason I was so athletic as a child. I wanted to be the fastest, the strongest and the best at everything so I pushed myself to get there! After I accepted that this could not happen, I slowly slid down to a state of laziness and indifference that has made it hard to want to push myself. Now that I remember what this used to do for me, I remember this during my workouts. I will still try not to compare myself to others, but I find that if I decide to compete with an ideal in my head, and convince myself I could do better, it has made pushing myself much easier. (And perhaps I do compare myself a little bit to others, but only to help push myself).

This was on a 4th of July where the children got to be part of a parade in my neighborhood.  No doubt I wanted to ride in front of the other kids. 

-Words of Encouragement, I believe that in general, everyone likes to hear when they do well at something. This has been a big motivator for me. Without it, I have a bad habit of giving up on things. As a younger sibling, I longed to hear that I did something as well as my sister. I would become horribly discouraged when there would be something I would be working really hard on, and then my sister need only to pick it up once and be great at it! To me I thought, what is the point of even trying. If I could receive positive feedback from others, I would assume that I was bad it it and eventually wonder what the point of even trying was if I could not be good at it. That is why having a "personal trainer" on the kinect works well for me since I get positive feedback when I am doing something right. (An achievement once and a while even). 

So there are different things that motivate me, depending on what the desired end is. For now I will just leave it at this short list. Do any of you share the same motivators? What would you add to your list? I think that knowing what motivates you helps you to achieve your goals faster.