resting (Photo credit: liber(the poet);)
Good News: You are probably not lazy!
Bad News: You may never find exercising a joy.
A person’s perceived lack of motivation to exercise is often their natural response to their need for leisure and rest. Some people naturally need to exercise and find it energizing and fun. Other people need to relax and lounge around and find exercising exhausting or at best a necessary evil. They can’t wait for exercising to be over.
Dr. Steven Reiss developed the Reiss Motivation Profile®, which measures 16 needs and motives common to all humans. One of the measures is the need to be physically active. If someone is naturally wired to need physical activity, then they are motivated to be physically active and feels frustration if the need is not satisfied to the extent the person feels is needed.
When I help an injured athlete with a high RMP score in physical activity understand their valued needs, they often report significant mental distress and frustration at being unable to satisfy their need to exercise due to the injury.
Someone needing physical exercise tends to report a feeling of rejuvenation and satisfaction when working out. Someone who needs leisure and rest typically reports exhaustion and fatigue following their self-forced exercise.
A Reiss Motivation Profile® is an amazingly predictive and illuminating tool for understanding your needs and behaviors. For someone with a need for leisure, a greater need than the need to be physically active will be necessary to motivate the person to endure exercise. For example, if a person values tranquility, then they are motivated to avoid risk, pain, injury, and death. If their physician prescribes exercise as a way to avoid the painful effects of diabetes, then the person’s higher need for tranquility will temporarily override their need for leisure, and they will exercise, albeit reluctantly, probably counting the minutes until they can relax again.
A leisurely person may find low-impact physical activity more tolerable, such as tai chi, yoga, walking, cycling, or other less strenuous forms of exercise.
If you are having trouble finding your motivation to exercise, is it possible you have a leisure deficit? When was the last time you felt fully rested and rejuvenated? If you are motivated to seek leisure and are not well rested, then you will probably not have the energy or motivation to force yourself to exercise because you need to rest first.
Understanding your needs is the key to understanding your behaviors and predicting future behaviors. By appealing to the most appropriate need, a person is able to complete a behavior they might otherwise not find naturally attractive or desirable.
For those interested in learning more about the Reiss Motivation Profile®, I recommend “Who Am I?” and “The Normal Personality,” both by Dr. Steven Reiss. Dr. Reiss also blogged for “Psychology Today” and you can read more about common human motivation on The World Society of Motivational Scientists and Professionals site,www.motivationscience.org.
If you want to experience your Reiss Motivation Profile, contact me at andy@adgrowthadvisers.com.
Ready to fire up your work and your life? I’m an executive coach from Indianapolis, and I work one-on-one with executives and managers, in person for local clients or via Zoom. If this post raised a question about your work or your next step, we should talk. The first discovery call is free and confidential. Book your discovery call, or call or text me at 317-643-0058, Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.
