Motivation vs. Habits – A Better Way to Approach Your Fitness Journey
- Jul 31, 2021
- 8 min read
Written by Jenifer Lyn, Executive Fitness Coach
Jenifer Lyn is the founder of G3 Wellness and the author of "Holy Core," a Pilates philosophy book. With 25+ years of experience, she specializes in helping busy, high-performing people manage back pain and build sustainable fitness habits that fit their actual lives.
If motivation and discipline were the answer, every gym and yoga studio in every city around the world would not only be full, they’d have a waiting list. Everyone would be effortlessly thin without complaint, their joints would move freely, their back pain would be totally gone, their abs would be ripped, and tech neck would be a distant memory we could all forget.
I wish that were the trajectory of the global wellness journey, but it’s not. Instead, the pattern we have all learned by heart seems to be increasing in numbers: a burst of motivation on January 1, a new gym membership, and a New Year’s resolution to get fit. It is a valiant start, like a horse out of the gate, and then, quietly, minute by minute, day by day, the reality becomes clear. We slide back, like the racehorse, to last place. By spring, we are back at it, psyching ourselves up to repeat the same story again. By January 1, we are off to the races, telling ourselves it will be different. We will win the race this time.
But it won't be. Not because we're lazy, and not because we lack desire, knowledge, resources, or skills. It's because almost nobody teaches us the thing that actually matters: how to develop micro habits that will support our fitness and wellness goals during the hours of an ordinary day, not just for the hour we spend on the mat or at the gym. These are habits that get woven into the day in a way we become so practiced at that we might not even notice we are doing them anymore.
The image we are sold vs. The life we actually live
Open any wellness app or scroll through any fitness feed, and you'll see the same two images on repeat: the six-pack abs and the serene meditator on a beach somewhere far away, eyes closed and utterly at peace. Both are aspirational. I don’t blame you for falling right into the fantasy. It’s alluring, and the thought of it is satiating, but the image and the thought, however real, are not a plan.
What those images don’t show you is the 2:30 p.m. slump at your desk and the days that get swallowed by meetings and errands until movement and rest have nowhere left to live. We're constantly sold the destination, but the roadmap almost never. Instead, we get a program that lists exercises and goals but offers no way to navigate the twists, turns, bends, and roadblocks that happen all day, every day. It’s no wonder we keep getting sidelined on our way to better health.
Here's an uncomfortable truth worth sitting with: if joining a gym were the fix, we wouldn't be living through a public health crisis of sedentary living, chronic pain, and burnout. Gyms have never been more available. Fitness apps have never been more abundant. Still, most people who buy a membership in January have stopped showing up by March.
Why is that? Have you stopped to ask? If you did, you’d blame it on your laziness, the difficulty of getting to a gym or mindfulness workshop, the kids, the partner, or the job. But the real barrier to fitness success is that nobody ever taught you how to build movement exercises that actually integrate into the architecture of a normal day. The moment life gets busy, that hour at the gym you planned to get to is the first thing on the to-do list to go because it was never anchored to anything else.
The missing piece: A plan for the whole day, not just the one-hour workout
After 25 years of working in fitness, as a teacher, business owner, and someone who has personally watched almost every client cycle through every version of "I'll start Monday," I've come to believe the real work isn't designing a better workout. It's designing better micro habits you can reach for at any point in your day, something small that can anchor you to that longer workout later in the week.
For example, you could try having something small and doable at three specific points each day:
The morning anchor
The morning anchor is a two-to-five-minute ritual that starts the day before the to-do list has a chance to take over. My personal morning anchor is a five-minute “white noise” meditation before I let anyone or anything get into my head. This means I sit in silence, tuning into the silence or the most mundane sound, like the hum of an air conditioner. I am starting my day receptive and with a clean slate.
When you wake, your brain is in one of its most receptive states. What you tap into when you first wake is the direction the arrow will point for the rest of the day. Clarity and openness are key states of mind for me personally.
If my brain is racing as soon as I wake and I cannot get those five minutes of peace, I will tap into a mantra of gratitude: “Thank you for fresh air, for my heartbeat, and for my dog.” I only let true feelings of gratitude journey through my meditation, so I start my day positively.
I always stretch before getting out of bed. I pick a minimum of three stretches and hold each one for 60 seconds, so my body is oriented toward self-care all day. Then, I walk my dog or feed the kids. I stave off looking at emails and text messages for as long as I can in the morning.
The midday reset
The midday reset is a short movement or breathing practice that interrupts hours of sitting, built to fit inside a real lunch break, not an idealized one.
For two minutes, try holding your hand over your heart. Inhale for four beats of your heart and exhale for four beats. Focusing on something specific is much more likely to draw your energy inward to a quiet place. Or do 10 wall push-ups to remind yourself that you are more than a person sitting at a desk all day. You are a breathing, moving human, and your body and mind deserve as much attention as that Excel spreadsheet.
The post-work wind-down
The post-work wind-down helps me mark the end of my workday and let go of the office. Instead of letting exhaustion push me toward a bag of chips or doomscrolling, I use my hack for letting go of the day. I get home, put on sweats, and turn my phone off! I drink water, do 50 jumping jacks, and then hop in the shower to rinse off the day.
Now I can put on jeans and a T-shirt, have my dinner, call my friends, and relax. I might check my phone one more time, but 30 minutes before bed, I turn it off again. I tend to sleep better when I have a ritual right after work and/or before bed. I am not alone in that thinking. Biohacking your sleep is known to promote a healthier brain and body.
The best part about the suggestions above is that they don’t require a gym, special equipment, or an extra hour you don't have. What they require is knowing they exist and having a reliable system to remind you that they matter, consistently, not just on the days you happen to remember.
Why this works when willpower doesn’t
Willpower gets you out of the gate and off to the races. But without a proper base, without micro habits to lean into when things get tough, that early burst isn’t sustainable. It can’t get you the results you actually want. Willpower alone is why more people abandon their resolutions and big body-changing commitments than stick with them.
The desire to stick with a workout plan needs to come from a supportive, encouraging place. If you are like most of us, the workout isn’t the only thing you need to be motivated to do that day. You are probably also exhausting your energy on decisions about your kids, plumbing issues, and how to respond to that email from your in-laws.
By the time your workout window arrives, you are probably running on empty, which is exactly why “just try harder” or “just do it” advice fails. If you are already depleted, how can you convince yourself to do yet another big thing? Sinking into that sofa looks like the better answer, as opposed to getting into workout clothes and opening the fitness app or, worse, driving all the way to the gym.
Micro habits work because they don't ask for willpower. They don’t ask for another big chunk of your already full day and depleted psyche. They ask for presence and two-minute nudges stacked across the whole day, repeated with ease and manageable self-accountability.
Those two-minute moments are like someone saying, “Excuse me, can you hold the elevator, please?” It’s an easy thing to do. It becomes a habit that gets repeated intermittently throughout the day, and that becomes your roadmap, the plan that sends subconscious messages to the body, such as, “It feels good when I take a real, focused breath every hour,” or “It feels fun when I can walk across the street for lunch to get some steps in instead of ordering in and eating at my desk.”
These are the little steps on the roadmap between destinations that the gym membership contract forgot to give you. These micro habits beat any fitness program you abandon by week three, every time, because they are as simple as taking a sip of water when you pass the water cooler.
Not everyone will have the exact same steps, and that’s great! Discovering what works for you is the most empowering part of this concept. I built my business around helping clients explore my library of stretches, workouts, mindfulness practices, and habit hacks so that each client can find what resonates and works for them, rather than giving them the same routine I gave the client before them.
Take Dai, my client who came in saying, “I used to be able to do the splits when I was younger. Now that I live at my desk, I can barely touch my toes.” I gave Dai a program of daily micro movements and habits aimed at his desired goal. He was a great student. It took only three weeks for him to notice more mobility and flexibility in his hamstrings. He is well on his way to doing the splits!
Or Cheryl, an attorney with scoliosis. Her goal is simply to manage the alignment of her spine so it doesn’t get worse as she enters her retirement years. Cheryl also travels a lot, so she needed exercises, stretches, and daily reminders that could be applied no matter where she was: at her desk, in a hotel, or baking cookies in the kitchen with the grandkids.
The best way I help my clients is by listening to their goals, offering options, charting out a habit-forming routine, and then letting them discover what works for them and what doesn’t. Your attention to the details in your body and your feedback help me fine-tune and adjust the roadmap as you move along your wellness journey. My wellness coaching program gives you all the trial-and-error support you need to discover which micro habits to implement on your road to fitness.
If this resonates, I've put the full framework, the exact structure for building your own morning, midday, and evening anchors, into a short, guided course called The Micro-Habit Method. It's built for people who don't have another hour to give, only a few minutes several times a day.
Read more from Jenifer Lyn
Jenifer Lyn, Executive Fitness Coach
Jenifer Lyn spent 25 years watching high-performing people suffer through back pain, tech neck, and desk drain and do nothing about it because nobody showed them how to fit wellness into the life they actually live. So she built a system that does exactly that. She is the founder of G3 Wellness, a Beverly Hills-based back care and movement program, and the author of Holy Core, a philosophy of Pilates. Her approach is built on micro-habits, small consistent movements practiced throughout the day that rebuild the body from the inside out. She works with private clients and corporate teams in a hybrid in-person/online approach. Her mission: moving your body is your birthright.
