AMPLIFYING YOUR MOTIVES

Harnessing the power of biology

A fundamental cornerstone of sustainable physical activity habits is having a strong motive, or set of motives. This sounds obvious, however the specifics of what makes a motive sufficiently strong are less frequently discussed.

What does “sufficiently strong” mean?

To answer this question, it helps to understand the fundamental factors that energise or provide resistance to taking action. By “fundamental” here I mean factors that relate to the core processes that underpin our physical functioning as humans, and I’ll be using this word frequently because this post is about working with our biology.

Physical cost-benefit analyses

Let’s start with the reality that physical activity is costly - certainly physically and possibly psychologically and resource-wise too. We have evolved to be energy-efficient where possible - being active where there is promise of significant reward, but otherwise conserving energy. As a result, there are complex processes in our brains that are constantly assessing the predicted and actual energy cost of literally everything we do and plan on doing.

Most of this is rapid and unconscious. There are a huge myriad of factors that feed into this equation - some things you might be able to identify, but many you won’t. We can consciously reflect and consider whether something is logically worth doing, but before this our brains have already formulated a prediction that feeds into our felt sense of anticipated or perceived effort. The greater the perception of effort, the stronger the activation of fundamental tendencies to withdraw from or avoid the activity, all in service of minimising effort. If you’ve ever felt that vague or visceral sense of “this just feels like it’s going to be a strain” and struggled to follow through on your intentions to be active, these processes are at work.

So because energy conservation and hence effort minimisation are big evolutionary drivers, the unconscious processes within our brains are often likely to come to the conclusion that physical activity isn’t worth doing.

There are certain conditions where this is less frequently the case: you are in good health and have plenty of energy, your life feels like it’s on track, you’re not emotionally or psychologically overwhelmed, or you’re in a consistent routine so the activity doesn’t demand much mental load. However, for many people the stars often aren’t aligned like this, and unless physical activity is felt to be something fundamentally good for our whole being, our brains will often deem it too costly. We can try to overcome this with conscious will, but research on the intention-behaviour gap demonstrates that around 50% of the time in people don’t act on such intentions.

In this sense then, a motive being “sufficiently strong” means strong enough that our brains deem activity promising at this fundamental level, meaning these crude cost-benefit analyses come out in our favour.

Photo by Fabio Comparelli on Unsplash

Competing motives

Furthermore, we have many different motives active at once in our lives not just our exercise motives. These motives also exist at different layers - conscious and unconscious - and some emerge in a “bottom-up” approach from our basic biological needs (e.g. feeding ourselves, recovering, connecting with others we feel secure with), whilst we formulate other more conceptual motives in a “top-down” manner via conscious reflection (e.g. achieving a physique we admire, earning enough money to fund a family holiday). They also have different temporal features - some motives are short-term, others long-term.

Other motives become apparent if we consider the emotions that turn up in our daily lives. For instance, anxiety pops up when we detect a potential threat to ourselves or something we care about, indicating the motive for threat avoidance or mitigation. Stress comes up when there are problems to be solved or uncertainties to be navigated. We feel sadness when we are somehow disconnected from something or someone, meaning the motives for reconnection and preventing further loss are active. Overall, we can infer our motives by taking a careful look at all the things we feel driven to do or avoid.

The bottom line is that we’re pretty complex, and unsurprisingly we’re always going to have motives that conflict to some degree - just because we want one thing doesn’t mean we don’t also want the opposite at the same time, or something else that will inadvertently pull us in the opposite direction.

So, “sufficiently strong” also means that your exercise motives have to be able to compete and regularly win against any conflicting motives - it has to seem worth it given the anticipated effort and opposition from other motives.

How do we make our exercise motives “sufficiently strong”?

One answer to this is that exercise has to have larger promise than opposing motives, which again sounds obvious, but discussions about this frequently neglect the more biological side of things. They tend to focus on abstract, intellectual motives established through logical reasoning which is a good start, but if we want to reduce resistance and amplify positive incentives we are best off also trying to harness the energy of our biology. There is another side to this answer too which is around trying to reduce resistance or perceived costs driven by other motives, but that’s for another day.

There are various ways of amplifying an activity’s sense of promise, but the one I will discuss here is that of making our motives work with other evolutionary drives. Let’s consider the basic evolutionary drive to withdraw that occurs when we’re faced with doing something that disturbs our sense of homeostasis - it requires energy and perhaps involves other things like temperature disruption and risk that will work against us in the cost-benefit analysis (e.g. going out into the cold and dark). In our evolutionary past, the drive that countered this drive to withdraw, and hence ensured we didn’t just hide away permanently and therefore die off, was the drive to get out and explore and pursue resources. This one only activates when there is perceived to be promise of important rewards or resources - it is “worth it” somehow.

The reason working with this fundamental drive is so powerful is because it is more directly linked into neurotransmitter systems that energise behaviour. We have the dopaminergic system which activates when we are pursuing or exploring something promising, and the action of dopamine here creates those senses of curiosity, wanting, motivation and focus that all make pursuing something challenging feel easier and attractive. There are various physiological effects that support this sense of energy and ease too - enhanced motor coordination, sharper attention, increased blood flow, arousal of the nervous system, etc. Essentially it biases the cost-benefit analysis towards pursuing rewards.

Equally, the opioid system gives us that almost euphoric sense of reward when we arrive at the point of achieving something, setting in motion a cascade of positive effects that increase the likelihood that we’ll want to pursue whatever caused that state again. In other words, we create a biological impetus by activating these systems - it is free energy.

Here I will provide some illustrative examples from my personal experience of how you might amplify this drive. When I was at university and training heavily for distance-running, I figured the best time to do my recovery runs was in the morning before lectures started. I also wanted to get more used to running early, considering many road races started in the morning.

However when winter drew in and the mornings were cold and dark, I’d find it a real struggle to get myself out there. I used to dread leaving the comfort of my warm bed and I still felt sluggish from having been asleep and thus the idea of exerting any physical energy was not appealing. But despite this sense of strain and reluctance, I managed to make it a consistent habit, and below is why.

Photo by Fitsum Admasu on Unsplash

Reason 1: Background context

The thing that got me attempting these early morning runs in the first place was the larger promise in the activity of running itself. This promise was awarded by a) my overarching goals, which revolved around particular events and times, and b) the progress I had made thus far.

But goals and progress don’t automatically create that special sense of promise - for that to be the case, they have to mean something personal to you. In my case, running served as a metaphor for the process of overcoming - challenging myself to do things I had never done and didn’t think I could do. Particularly relevant to me was the act of battling against physical exertion - it felt like I was pushing hard against my limits beyond just the physical, and this felt reparative for me during that time in my life - it was a compensation for feeling hopeless in other domains of life.

I also reached a point where I was running times way beyond what I thought I was capable of, which meant my goals and their sub-activities (i.e. training sessions/runs) provided a deep sense of excitement and adventure as I sought to find out exactly what else I could do. The importance of my goals then leant even more satisfaction to any progress in times. States such as excitement and adventure tap directly into the evolutionary drive to be active, so in essence I had a strong level of background motivation.

Practical take-home: your goals or focus with physical activity don’t necessarily have to involve the exact states of excitement and adventure, but they do need to ignite some kind of positive feeling in you if you’re going to maximise their potency. They’re likely to do this if they are shaped around something that feels fundamental to your well-being, as if it is taking you as a whole person in a positive direction in your life, and reflective of your deepest values. Often shaping goals/foci in this way requires more general reflection about yourself and what you want from your life, beyond physical activity.

Reason 2: having an INCONSISTENT habit in place first

The fact that running in general was endowed with such promise helped me to get an inconsistent habit in place to begin with - if I didn’t feel overly tired or stressed I could get myself out there intermittently. Contrary to popular belief, consistent habits are often inconsistent at the start - this doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be able to get consistent. Starting anywhere is better than starting nowhere.

Practical take-home: try not to be all-or-nothing, and instead start by trying whatever it is when it feels easy or you feel good, and accept initially that you may not make it when you don’t feel so good. Then you can build over time - you just have to be patient and acknowledge that there are stages of change, and the first is often hit-and-miss.

Reason 3: External accountability

I became more consistent with early runs when I found a training partner (Rachel). I bumped into her on a run one morning and we stopped briefly to say hello, not expecting to see anyone else out and about. In acknowledging this, we agreed to meet for early runs a few times per week. Not only did I not want to let Rachel down, but it was also a very positive opportunity for social connection. She was a very friendly, non-judgmental person who put me at ease, and there is something inherently rewarding about doing something with others who are focused on the same thing.

This is also an example of how just getting out there and trying to do the activity can lead to other things that make doing the activity easier. It’s about exposing yourself to further opportunities, as eloquently discussed in Footnotes for Flourishing here).

Practical take-home: if you can outsource some of the decision-making to someone or something external, it reduces the mental load of the activity and makes it feel more like a done deal or commitment. Even better, the senses of connection and community that come from training with like-minded people are deeply meaningful for most and therefore tap into this sense of promise. There is definitely an argument to be made for learning to rely purely on yourself, in my opinion, but when you’re simply trying to establish a habit it’s best to take advantage of all the resources you can.

Reason 4: Giving meaning to the act itself

One challenge with relying on others to keep you accountable though is that you can’t control when they are and aren’t there - neither Rachel or I would be at university forever, and there were times when one of us couldn’t make it. I also wanted to get to a point where I could rely solely on myself, for my own sense of achievement.

The final and perhaps most potent layer of promise came over time from doing the early morning runs - an example of how if you just expose yourself to the activity even inconsistently more meaning emerges through experience. For me, going out in the cold and dark made me cringe - I was going against what my body wanted me to do - but the fact that it was hard made it somehow hugely satisfying to achieve. It soon felt simultaneously like a slog AND an adventure, and I also began to feel proud that I was making sacrifices for my goals when it would be very easy not to. The fact it made me cringe somehow became enmeshed with the sense of promise.

It also seems to me that there can be a bidirectional relationship between our motives and actions - whilst our motives drive behaviour, what we actually DO then feeds back into our perceptions of what our situation is, and hence influences the motives surrounding an activity. In other words, our actions have implications which are implicitly recognised by our brains - going out into the cold and dark despite reluctance implies promise, because why else would you do it? If you see someone running in the cold and dark you probably assume they have a good reason to. It certainly felt like my more consistent actions fed back into a sense of adventure and challenge for me, which then made the runs more promising even though I didn’t want to get up to do them. And the fact that I was making such sacrifices towards my goals then leant those even more importance for me, and so on, further supporting the idea that what we do towards something has the potential to influence how we feel about it and afford it greater significance. So I somehow became more motivated by doing what felt overly effortful to do….

This is also a prime example of how you just need your motives to win out, not to silence the others. I never shook that feeling of “urgh I can’t be bothered” - it felt like an ordeal every single time, but it had become a done deal in my mind so I’d haul myself out there. Furthermore, there was also a spill-over effect into other related situations. I soon found running in the rain and mud equally adventurous, despite the fact I’d initially cringed at that. Then I felt the same about more intense workouts, etc. - it became an adventure to get out there and do the thing because of the “oh no, not that” nature of it.

I will bring this post to a close by validating any battles you might be having with consistency in physical activity - genuinely our bodies and brains, shaped by evolution, naturally work against us sometimes. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it means your tasks are to respect the plurality and power of the drives you have within you, consider how these drives and your exercise motives can work together more effectively, and explore what really makes you tick at a deeper level.

Chloe Psychology of Movement