Two things that I’ve put a lot of emphasis on in the past when it comes to physical activity habits, both in my work as a psychologist and my own personal exercise activities, are enjoyment and values.
This was to a significant degree informed by psychological research, which so far suggests that positive emotion and enjoyment make exercise feel easier and heighten people’s motivation to engage in it repeatedly. Equally, being connected to values – arguably a form of intrinsic motivation (doing something for the love of the process) – is also associated with similar outcomes.
There are papers upon papers on these ideas in the available research literature, and you could also argue these things are reflected in common-sense thinking about how to make exercise stick. Yet over time, professional and personal experience has shown me that enjoyment and values are not enough under certain circumstances: in other words, when there is emotional resistance to exercise and that exercise is experienced as challenging for whatever reason, you need something extra.
Take enjoyment (and other positive emotions) - it acts as what I like to think of as a biological magnet – a subjective experience that sets a particular neurobiological pattern in motion such that we are naturally drawn to the activity that triggers it. We don’t have to force ourselves to exercise in this case; rather, it almost calls to us because it has feel-good stuff associated with it. But even magnets lose their pull if you place obstacles in the way… so my thinking has developed towards the idea that even the things we enjoy the most lose their magic when we are in states that are not conducive with positive emotion.
To give you an example: I love Muay Thai, but if enjoyment was enough I wouldn’t be deterred from doing bag work simply because it involved getting the bag out of the garage and hanging it on the outside wall of my house. This was the situation for me for months on end at one point. The reality is that it isn’t just the enjoyable elements that are involved in an activity, but less enjoyable elements too which may take on different meanings or stronger negative valence under different emotional conditions.
So it becomes relevant to ask: “what does it mean to have to take the bag out of the garage and hang it on the wall?” It takes all of about 2 minutes, so you might think this seems ridiculous. But a logical answer to this question doesn’t cut it in this instance. Rather, the more relevant question is: “what is phenomenologically involved in taking the bag out of the garage and hanging it on the wall?”
If you go by the research literature, the next sensible step might be to say “OK, where enjoyment is lacking then surely I can turn to my values.” And sure, I could come up with various values underpinning Muay Thai training and even the isolated act of getting the bag out of the garage when I didn’t feel like it. I really thought I valued it… but still that didn’t cut it a lot of the time. So what was going on?
A quote of Robert Johnson’s comes to mind (p.73, Inner Gold): “It is worth pure gold to know what you are really up to, underneath your professed ideals.”
In reality, the things you struggle with are not about the things they look like they are about on the surface, and the values you hold consciously are not necessarily reflected below. This wasn’t about lacking motivation to get the bag out of the garage - it was about the broader network of psychological content that that scenario tapped into, and that needed investigating.
But returning to the topic of the post, as I’ve said rationally chosen values can certainly bring meaning and focus to a process. But values alone are insufficient to compel behaviour when there are many compelling reasons not to do it, particularly if you are not feeling remotely inclined.
They need power of feeling behind them. Just because you consciously proclaim to have a set of values doesn’t mean they are automatically afforded motivational relevance (i.e. a deeply felt sense of importance). People claim to value all sorts of things, yet they still don’t act on them or get the things done, as evidenced by me and the Muay Thai hiatus and also the near 50% intention-behaviour gap. This is a classic case of ego inflation - the conscious mind thinks it knows and values all there is to know and value.
But where does this power of feeling come from, to give our values some emotional clout? From my current perspective, there needs to be a moral framework - a set of principles and a sense of “this is too important not to”.
There needs to be an attitude towards the experience in itself of doing things when it’s hard to, independent of the activity in question. This is a kind of discipline, a sense of holding oneself to account for moral reasons. And this attitude is underpinned by an understanding of what the task is in life. Values must be underpinned by a greater importance that relates to the much bigger question of how to live life itself. You may really like the idea of courage, for example, but what is the inherent good in that? What is that ultimately in service of? This leads us back to questions such as: what will take my life in general in a good direction, and what is inherently “good”? It involves the development of a broader life philosophy, rather than just a consideration of how the activity will benefit your life.
Furthermore, we’re touching upon one of the great mythological patterns of what it means to be human – still trying to do what is “good” in the face of what James Hollis (see Tracking the Gods) calls the gremlins of fear and lethargy. This situation is not “pathological”, but a fundamental part of being human - contending with the desire to retreat to safety and comfort. All of us can do hard things when we feel good, and it’s easy to rationally generate some idealistic values. But it’s a different story when we don’t feel good.
To take on this challenge of overcoming these gremlins, day in day out, involves the commitment to no longer turning a blind eye – cultivating a willingness to take on the task of overcoming inertia and comfort, and holding oneself to account in service of a more meaningful life. And this is not easy to do – it’s far easier to give into that all-enticing voice: “do it later, it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things”, etc.
So there are no quick practical solutions embedded in this post - rather, an invitation to take the time to reflect on what “inherent/moral good” means when it comes to your life, and what you want your principles to be when it comes to dealing with those ever-so-human temptations of succumbing to fear and lethargy.
The garage contains more than just the bag. It contains … spiders. Huge ones!