How Negativity Sabotages Your Health and Exercise Goals

Negative thinking is the single most prominent factor in any defeat, and it’s especially deadly to a fledgling health commitment. Your mindset sets the stage for all of your activities on a daily basis. A positive mindset produces positive results, without fail. The results of a negative mindset are equally reliable – you will reliably fail because you have already set yourself up to fail. Take a look at these five damaging ways that negative thinking affects your exercise regimen, new diet program and other health goals. Then you can start to envision the dramatic impact of switching from negative thinking to positive thinking.

Negativity Saps Motivation

Focusing on the negative aspects of exercise will, understandably, reduce your desire to follow through on participation. It’s a challenge. Like many challenging things, your body will initially convince you that you don’t really want to do it. Negative thinking allows you to not only feed into the desire not to get up and exercise, but to take the time to talk yourself out of getting up and doing an exercise routine.

Don’t feel motivated? Just take the first step. Talk yourself into getting your shoes on or plugging in that treadmill. Don’t look beyond that and allow yourself to be discouraged. No matter how tired or busy you are, you can bend down and tie a shoelace. Do that, and then worry about the next step.

An Unhealthy Mindset Skews Priorities

Sure, you need to exercise. You also need to do the dishes, go buy groceries, call an old friend – so many other things that have to go into such a short day. Negative thinking helps you focus on the short term, and what’s most important right in front of your face. Sure, talking to friends is important. Getting the right exercise will help protect your health, allowing you to be more alert and potentially live longer so you’ll have that much more time to visit with them.

Your Downer Inner Voice Always Finds the Faults

No exercise program is perfect, and your negative thinking will be quick to draw your attention to any and all shortcomings. Maybe it’s a problem with the exercise itself, or maybe it’s your own body image. Your focus turns to that fault or perceived fault when you allow yourself to think negatively. If that one thing doesn’t change quickly, then the negativity may seem well-founded, allowing your exercise program to suffer.

You Will Convince Yourself That It’s Futile

Everyone has self-talk – that little voice in your head that always has something to say about your life. If you let it, that self-talk will often turn to negativity. When you’re trying to stick to an exercise program, especially if you haven’t made much progress toward your goals, then negative thinking will start to convince you that you simply won’t achieve those goals. Once you believe there’s no point in continuing your exercise program, you might as well kick back and pick up the TV remote. Belief is the single biggest hurdle you’re likely to face in any challenge.

Victories Can Only Be Acknowledged Without Negativity

Getting into shape is a slow process. Especially in today’s instant-gratification culture, slow things are really tough to do. Your negative thinking will help you focus on those difficulties, and on everything you haven’t achieved. Chances are, you’ll completely overlook your victories. For instance, you may be trying to lose weight, and the last five months have yielded a ten-pound loss. While that’s a good loss, you may despair at the 70 more pounds before goal weight. Maybe the scale hasn’t tipped at all, and you completely overlook the 5” loss on your waistline or noticeable muscle tone improvement.

Before you can achieve weight management or the level of fitness you want, you first have to learn how to master your mind. Train yourself out of the negative thought patterns that sabotage your success. You may be surprised at how quickly you feel great and achieve the look you want when you embrace the power of a positive mindset.