Action step : Think about the immediate rewards “youre feeling” from being physically active.

There are so many important reasons to be physically active: long life, less cancer, a healthy body weight. But these long-term motivatings just aren’t motivating, Segar explains. In fact, they actually pollute the way we think about exercising and transform it from an essential, life-giving activity to guilt-inducing punishment.

“We need to re-conceptualize physical activity away from a chore, and away from abstract future reasons, to the immediate reasons that actually fuel us, ” Segar concluded. “Because exercise has been so contaminated, especially by weight loss, when people do it they experience it as punishing and they do it in penalise ways.”

Instead of long-term objectives like, “I don’t want to get diabetes” or “I want to lose 10 pounds for the reunion, ” the best way to motivate yourself for exert is to think of the immediate rewards that happen either during or right after their own activities. These could be a feeling of accomplishment, having more energy, feeling happier, taking time to connect with a friend or engraving out time to escape from life’s daily stressors.

To set it another way, regular exercises claim that they do it for better health. But when asked what motivates them to get up in the morning and operate before the sunlight is up, they say that if they don’t do it, they feel terrible for the rest of the day. Avoiding that horrible feeling, Segar says, is their real motivation for exercising regularly — not some vague hope of “getting healthy.”

2. Determine your favorite physical activity — even if it doesn’t seem like “exercise.”

Action step : Be honest about which exercises leave you feeling hurt, depleted and resentful. Then brainstorm physical activities that you genuinely like.

Research that indicates people who exert in order to achieve a certain outcome, like weight loss or body sculpting, exercise less, enjoy their workouts less and feel more stress about exercising than those who are motivated by the physical activity itself.

“When people use physical activity as a body sculpting tool, the logical thing to do is to exercise hard, because you want to burn as many calories as possible, ” Segar explains. “But in general, people’s displeasure goes up when they exert at high intensities, and secondly, when people exert out of obligation, it turns the activity into a depleting experience.”

That’s why it’s important to expand your notion of what exercising is “supposed” to look like and realize that it’s truly merely sustained physical activity at a moderate intensity. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s long list of moderate activities include unexpected things like gardening, grooming a horse, walking the dog, singing and dancing in church, housework, playing with children, hand clean and waxing a automobile and skateboarding. These are in addition to all the usual suspects, like walking, swimming, dancing and yoga. Doing things you like will help transform exercise from a punishment into a gift that can gasoline you to do the things you care about most, Segar concluded.

3. Give yourself permission to prioritize your well-being.

Action step : Ask your friends and family to support your efforts to take care of yourself.

People need to give themselves permission to think of self-care as an essential part of life, that are due to be prioritized and negotiated for just as we juggle meal hours, period for work and day with friends and family. Self-care could include anything from better sleep to physical activity to eating well to any other activity that attains you feel happy and healthy.

While it sounds good in theory, in practice this could mean some hard dialogues are in your future. Could your partner make an effort to cook dinner twice a week so that you can go to your dance class? Could you walk with your child to her playdate instead of dropping her off in the car? Could your weekly happy hour with friends become a weekly hike?

“The next part of permission is to realize you won’t have that extra time to sleep or workout if you don’t redistribute the work on your home or office, ” Segar said. “Ask people to understand that if you don’t take care of yourself , no one else is going to.”

It’s easier said than done, but once you start to prioritize your own well-being regularly, you’ll realize that you will actually have more energy and care to give to your loved ones, Segar writes in her book.

4. Let go of perfectionism

Action step : Write out a “continuum of success” that includes several activities for the week. After the week is over, sitting there and evaluate how it went, and then think of strategies to try to improve for next time.

So you’ve got your listing of physical activities, you’ve devoted yourself to be allowed to prioritize them and you’ve negotiated time in your schedule. But what happens when you get to the end of the week and you realize that you’ve only done one of the three things you had originally planned to do?

Think of your goals along a continuum of success instead of trying to hit a single bullseye, says Segar. Let yourself know that doing one of the three schemed activities was a success, instead of going for an all-or-nothing approach. It’s a most realistic and productive route of approaching exercising, and it will assist you evaluate your progress in a non-judgmental, self-compassionate way.

“Don’t judge yourself when you don’t do something, ” she said. “Think about why you didn’t do it, and then come up with a strategy for next time.”

Divorcing exercise from its long-term health benefits is, counterintuitively, the best style to motivate ourselves to prioritize physical activity. The sooner we are going to be able reprogram the way we think about exercise, the easier it will be to make room for fun physical activity in our daily lives.