I Don't Wanna

One particular difficulty that I've had with exercising is in consistency. Oh...it's easy to start off gangbusters. When the motivation is strong at the beginning, there is no problem in putting all the needed time and effort into going to the gym for a good workout. Just look inside gyms at the first of the year when everybody is pumped with their New Year's resolutions. Standing room only.

After a couple of weeks though, the gym population starts to thin out a bit.

That's when people start waking up with the I don't wannas. Laying in a nice warm bed groggily awakened by an alarm in the early darkness...the thought of getting up, getting dressed, going someplace to sweat; my immediate thought is "I don't wanna". Well, actually, my thoughts are generally sprinkled with a few vulgarities; but you get my drift.

Here's the thing. There are a lot of activities I do every morning that I don't really want to do. I shave. I hate shaving. It's a pain in the rear, but I do it every morning because having a beard is even more trouble. I shower. I brush my teeth. I put on clean clothing (which means I wash them too). I prepare breakfast. I clean up the house a bit. In short, I do many things every morning not because I have fun doing them but because it's just what I have to do. If I skipped any of these chores, my day would be pretty crappy and....if I skipped doing them long enough, my life would quickly start to deteriorate.

So I do these things for me, for my quality of living. Exercise should be in the same category. It needs to be something I do regardless of whether I feel like doing it or not because the results are beneficial. I'm trying to develop the mindset that when I wake up in the morning and tell myself "I don't wanna"; I will also tell myself "so what, do it anyway".

I'm starting to believe that the hardest muscle to develop is the one inside my skull.