What's Your Motivation?

I was real proud of myself the other day. I ran a 7 minute mile on the treadmill and 2 miles in 14 minutes 13 seconds. That was heavy hauling for me...my lungs hurt all day. I started running and lifting weights when I began college almost 10 years ago. I've gotten more serious about in the past year or two, but it has been something important to me nonetheless. Here recently, my wife and I have added healthy eating to our lifestyle. We do this because we respect ourselves; thus, we want to keep our bodies, minds, and souls healthy. Not to say we don't struggle with self-hatred/dislike from time to time, but for the most part, we try hard to take care of what God has given us.

It wasn't always this way for me. My motivation for working out, dieting, etc., was my dislike of self whereas now I do it out of self-respect. But, as I already mentioned, the self-hatred motivation is still something I struggle with from time to time. This clip from Scrubs might ring true for many of you that have decided to start a regular work out routine or join a dieting program. But there is a big problem with self-hatred being our motivation for bettering ourselves. If we are successful in our efforts to better ourselves, then we begin to no longer dislike ourselves; therefore, we lose our motivation. Sometimes we even sabotage our efforts (e.g., binging, giving up-starting over pattern) because in order to continue with the program, we have to hate/dislike ourselves, because that, afterall, is our motivation. Hal Runkel, author of ScreamFree Parenting, says that often people have such poor self-image that they decide to join a dieting program, but then end up more miserable than before because now they have given up the only thing in their life that influences happiness - food. Therefore, we need to shift our thinking. We need to start loving and respecting ourselves so that when we choose to exercise or not eat this or that or take some time for prayer and meditation, it is being motivated by our self-love, not self-hatred. Pauls says in Ephesians 5:29, "After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church..." Boy do we need to get our minds back on that line of thinking.