What do you do when you don't feel like it?

Don’t feel like getting up the in morning?  Do you have the luxury of sleeping in?  Folks tell me I’ll enjoy that part of retirement (no…not yet…not for a while).  But on days when I might sleep in, I wake up anyway.

Are you one of those that hit the snooze alarm every day?  Not me. I really have no idea how the snooze alarm on my bedside clock even works. Oh, I’m sure I could figure it out, but when the alarm goes off, I’m wide awake. You’ve got to find motivation to get up and get going.

Don’t feel like going to work? I’m not guilty of that one either. I know that I was lucky, extremely lucky, to discover a job that I truly love, that I look forward to each and every day. When that alarm clock does go off, I am blessed to not lie there and say “oh woe is me—another day at the old grindstone.”

Nope. For me it’s “oh man, I get to go do this stuff again today!”  If that sounds self-righteous at all, it’s not meant that way. I know what it means. It means I won the career lottery.

When kids come to me for college advice, my core recommendation is to find something that you truly love doing and build a career around it. As the cliché goes, if you find something that you love and make it your life’s work, you’ll never really work a day in your life.

I saw a meme one time that went something like this:  8 AM plans for dinner--baked chicken, salad, and two vegetables.  5 PM actual dinner—pizza and sodas.

The real part of life is that sometimes you just don’t feel like cooking. And that healthy meal became junk food out of necessity.  I get it. I really do. My wife and I do that from time to time.

Planning your meals helps. Laying out that chicken in the morning makes it more likely that you will not stop by for fast food on the way home.

But the big ticket item on this topic is exercise.  What do you do if you just don’t feel like exercising?  I said something last week about not always enjoying biking on the hills that are everywhere around here or the strength training that I do 2-3 times per week.

A buddy and I have a saying about all that. “Are you riding or are you hiding.”  That may be all about the weather or maybe I just don’t feel like it. With few exceptions, once I get out there or get started with a ride or a workout, I’m glad I did. You know in your head that you need to exercise (or eat right or sleep enough) but your heart just isn’t in it.

What do you do? Listen to your heart and ignore your head? An Accountability Partner helps. Traveling the path to better health is easier with someone in your life to go with you. To hold you accountable.

There is no doubt that an exercise partner helps, especially on those days when you might not feel like exercising. There’s just something about knowing that someone else is counting on you being there that will make you get out of bed in the morning.

For years, I exercised with the same group of people. If somebody missed, they were likely to get a text message. “We missed you” is common. Sometimes it was more like “get your lazy butt out of bed.” In any case, it helped.

Maybe you made a New Year Resolution. To get healthier. To exercise more. Gyms are usually full in January, taper off in February, and are back to the regulars in March.

If that’s you, then let me offer you a suggestion. Establish a new mindset. Decide that this is going to be long term. Decide that this is going to be your lifestyle from now on. 

And then find an excuse to get out of bed in the morning.