What Is a Deep Motivator and Why Do You Need One Before You Start Working Out?

By Cassie Therrien-Abell  |  Lifestyle

Why do most fitness goals fail within a few weeks?

Most people start with what I call a flat goal. Something like: I want to lose weight. I want to build muscle. I want to be more flexible. Those are fine starting points, but they're not enough to carry you through a deadline that gets pushed up, a kid who comes home sick, or a week where work just implodes.

A flat goal has no roots. The first time life gets in the way, there's nothing holding it in place.

A deep motivator is different. It's the thing underneath the goal that actually matters to you. The thing that, when you remind yourself of it on a hard day, gives you a reason to keep going anyway.

What is the 5 Whys exercise and how does it work for fitness?

The 5 Whys is a strategy for peeling back the layers of your goal until you get to something real. It works like this:

Start with your flat goal. Write it down on paper, not in your phone. Pen and paper matters here. Then ask yourself why that goal is important to you. Write that down too. Look at what you wrote and ask yourself why that matters. Write it down. Keep asking why at least five times total. You can go deeper if you need to. Five is the minimum.

Here's what that might actually look like in practice:

See the difference? That last answer has actual fuel in it. You can't argue with it on a bad day. It doesn't disappear when you're tired.

How do you use a deep motivator once you have one?

Your deep motivator becomes the thing you come back to every time motivation dips, which it will. Every time you work out, every time you prepare a nourishing meal, every time you're about to bail on something you planned for yourself, you remind yourself of it.

Use it to motivate yourself when you don't feel like doing the thing. Use it to praise yourself when you do. Write it on sticky notes if you have to. It doesn't matter how you do it. Just keep it close.

The reason this works has to do with dopamine, your brain's motivation hormone. Dopamine latches onto something it wants you to go get and wakes up your brain to go after it. When your deep motivator is clear and emotionally charged enough, it triggers that dopamine response naturally. Your brain starts pulling you toward your goals instead of you having to white-knuckle your way there.

But none of that works if you skip the step of actually finding it first.

What if your deep motivator feels too obvious or too small?

It's not. If something keeps showing up when you do this exercise, that's your brain telling you it actually matters. Don't overanalyze it. Don't try to make it sound impressive. The best deep motivators are deeply personal and kind of embarrassingly simple.

I worked with a woman once whose deep motivator was that she wanted to be able to buy clothes she actually liked without crying in the fitting room. That's it. That was enough. It kept her going for months when everything else fell apart.

Yours doesn't have to sound like an inspirational poster. It just has to be true.

Questions? We're here.