Motivation, Part 3: "Believe in yourself!"
How to foster intrinsic motivation. Part Three of the Motivation Series.
Welcome to the third installment of The Motivation Series, where we’re investigating the best ways to spur long-term exercise routines. In the first edition, we found out that intrinsic (or internal) motivators are associated with sticking to an exercise program over an extended period of time. In the second edition, we focused on the most powerful intrinsic motivator: fun. Today, we’re zooming in on satisfaction.
Have you ever finished a workout and been utterly satisfied by what you accomplished? Maybe you didn’t have fun, but you did something challenging, perhaps on a day you didn’t feel like working out, and as a result, you were pleased with yourself. Good decision, you said, as you headed home.
According to the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, someone who is intrinsically motivated is driven by “the sheer pleasure and satisfaction of engaging in the behavior itself” (emphasis mine). Doing the thing brings them joy or satisfaction.
Satisfaction can’t be forced. For creatives or athletes, it’s often experienced in what some call “flow state”, where you’re fully in the moment, engaged in what you’re doing — not checking the clock or wondering what you look like.
That feeling of satisfaction keeps you coming back for more. You’ll start a new project, try a new recipe, or sign up for another competition because you want to see something through and be satisfied again.
In my reading on exercise motivation, I haven’t come across any studies that explicitly look at satisfaction and exercise — but I have come across studies that examine the connection between intrinsic motivation and something called self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is the level of trust you have in yourself to follow through on your commitments and accomplish tasks. It’s action-oriented confidence that overlaps a lot with growth mindset, the idea that you can learn and improve at things you don’t currently excel in.
Like your motivations, your level of self-efficacy can vary from one area of life to another: you may have sky-high self-efficacy for interior design and thrifting, but absolutely no self-efficacy for house renovations or event planning. Within the realm of fitness, you may be extremely confident in your ability to learn calisthenics, but have no self-efficacy when it comes to running distances or swimming in open water.
However, having high self-efficacy in one area of life can help you develop self-efficacy in another area. Your past experience of following through on commitments, learning new skills, building strength or endurance, and overcoming insecurities can give you confidence in the face of new challenges. Working to your first pullup can set you up psychologically to train for a canoe race — not because you built the same skill or fitness needed for the canoe race, but because you successfully worked through a process of intentionally developing strength and technique and you’ll work through a similar process to train for the race.1
Numerous studies have found a positive correlation between self-efficacy and intrinsic (or autonomous) motivation. Many of these studies have also found a positive correlation between self-efficacy and exercise adherence — or sticking with an exercise routine over an extended period of time.
In a longitudinal study published in Exercise Medicine in 2019, researchers surveyed 243 women over time and mapped responses according to type of motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic), stage of change (contemplation, action, maintenance, etc.), and self-efficacy. They found that those who exercised more often and over a longer period of time had greater exercise self-efficacy than those who didn’t exercise consistently — and those who started exercising more often over the course of the study improved their level of self-efficacy.
Another study, published in 2022, surveyed 645 Shanghai residents and found that self-efficacy drove sports participation.
“People with a keen sense of self-efficacy are more confident,” the authors explained. “They tend to think that they can better complete all kinds of sports-related movements.”
This confidence leads them to participate in sports more often, and participating more means they have greater opportunity to develop fitness and skills. That fitness and skill foster higher self-efficacy, which leads to more participation over time.
Meanwhile, those with low self-efficacy are less likely to try new exercises or sports, thus limiting their opportunity to develop fitness and skills, ultimately making those activities harder to participate in. This reinforces their low self-efficacy and leads to less participation over time.
Whether low or high, self-efficacy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds a person’s existing perception of themselves and makes it harder to change their minds.
Despite this, self-efficacy isn’t set in stone. Multiple studies have observed that self-efficacy increases in response to exercise — and this growth in self-efficacy corresponds with an increase in intrinsic motivation. A person who thinks they’re inherently weak or incapable of consistently exercising can change their own mind by working out and confronting their false beliefs. And eventually, they’ll start exercising for the intrinsic reasons of fun or enjoyment or satisfaction.
How to Improve Your Self-Efficacy
1. Confront your main obstacle with one small step.
What is your go-to excuse for not working out: Time? Energy? Not knowing what to do?
Identify the main obstacle you’re facing, and then take one consistent step to confront it:
If your obstacle is time, start by just getting yourself to the gym once or twice a week. You can do a workout if you want to, but getting yourself there will confront the idea that you don’t have time to go.
If your obstacle is energy, set a timer and work out for just 20, 15, or even 10 minutes. You can add to this over time, and you might find that once you get started, the energy kicks in.
If your obstacle is not knowing what to do, sign up for a class, work with a personal trainer, or download a fitness app. (If you’re less experienced, start with a personal trainer.) You don’t have to use these resources every time you work out, but they’ll help build your mental training library so when you’re on your own, you won’t be at a loss of what to do in the weight room.
Whatever your first step is, commit to doing it once or twice a week. This should help knock those obstacles down to size and show yourself that you can do the thing you’re struggling to do. Over time, you can add another day — or identify a new obstacle to confront.
2. Enlist a kind friend for external accountability.
While intrinsic motivation is the most sustainable, external motivation is still useful. Many studies show that people who regularly exercise have both external and intrinsic motivation. Sometimes external motivation grows with intrinsic motivation; sometimes it was there from the beginning and got people started in establishing new habits.
Why not harness external motivation in pursuit of intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy?
As you identify that next small step (#1), think of someone you could share it with so they can hold you accountable. You’ll want to choose a friend you respect and trust, who will be kind and honest. It may be helpful if they have a similar goal or if they have a positive relationship with exercise that they want to share with you.
If I’ve just described a purple unicorn, choose the friend closest to that description. Keep in mind that the dialogue about your pursuits — both with your friend and with yourself — should be kind, not harsh. If you struggle with self-efficacy, you may also struggle with negative self-talk. You need someone who will build you up and believe in you when you don’t.
3. Sign up for a class or set up a series of sessions with a personal trainer.
Sometimes, the best way to guarantee follow-through is to pay money up front. If there’s no way you’re getting yourself to the gym or outside for a run on your own, find a class or a personal trainer that interests you and whose fees would feel like a waste if you didn’t show up.
Sign up, pay up, and show up.
Only schedule a realistic number of sessions. Don’t register for a week of classes; do two or three. Don’t schedule daily personal training sessions. Instead set up one or two each week for, say, the next six weeks.
The point here is to force yourself to follow through, so that follow-through can foster self-efficacy — trust that you will do what you say you’ll do — and maybe even build a new habit.
4. Identify a new skill you’d like to learn.
This may be the best way to build self-efficacy — especially if your struggle isn’t routine, but trusting your ability to master new things.
Think through a few of the physical movements or feats that make your jaw drop in a good way. Maybe it’s those pistol squat flows that people like Taylor of Little T Fitness do on Instagram. Maybe it’s ring muscle-ups or L-sits or box jumps.
Choose one. Scale it down as needed. (If you’re just starting out, your first goal leading to a pistol squat flow could be simply one pistol squat through the full range of motion or a single-leg squat down to a 14-inch platform.) Look up tutorials on YouTube. And spend 10 minutes at the end of each workout training that skill. You could also enlist a coach to break down the movement and teach you the proper mechanics. Work on the skill diligently and pay attention to your progress over time. Once you master it, celebrate.
Learning new skills is a great way to foster interest in fitness. It keeps routines from becoming too boring, and it provides a fresh burst of satisfaction whenever you successfully cross a new goal off your list. That satisfaction then feeds the fire for your next skill.
5. Reflect on your workout sessions.
When you successfully get a workout in, follow it up with some reflection. This doesn’t need to be anything elaborate. A quick conversation with yourself in the parking lot is enough. But take time to consider what you liked, what you disliked, what you want to do differently next time.
Be intentional about identifying the positives. Maybe you were expecting to hate the rowing machine, but you enjoyed it. Or maybe you were surprised by how much weight you could squat. Or maybe you’re proud of yourself for pushing through a hard set. Take note of those things. This will help foster both satisfaction and self-trust by making you more aware of your successes.
Self-efficacy is basically a fancy word for self-confidence. It’s built through positive experiences, but it can also sustain us through tougher experiences. Not every day in the gym is a stunning success. Every lifter fails lifts. Every athlete has off days. But self-efficacy supports resilience through those off days, because we know we can do hard things, learn new skills, build strength over time, even if the process isn’t always linear.
The successful days grant a sense of satisfaction in what we’ve achieved, while the challenging days leave us hungry to finally do the thing — whether the thing is master a new skill, increase our one-rep max, run a faster 400 meters, or get to the gym three days a week.
Previously in the Motivation Series
Recommended Reading
Elite Gymnasts Are Aging Up (The New Yorker)
7 ways I’ve become fitter that have nothing to do with running or going to the gym (Stylist)
Meet the Women Leading the Charge Behind the Adaptive Fitness Movement (Shape)
What’s coming up?
Olympics stories
In my own life, I’ve experienced growth in self-efficacy through crafts. I’ve been knitting since middle school and, from the beginning, I said I would never knit a sweater because it was too complicated and would take too long. But in 2020, I started embroidering — which is much slower than knitting. Over eight months, I developed patience through embroidery and, ultimately, trust in my ability to follow through on slow-moving projects. By the time fall rolled around, I was ready to try knitting my first sweater. My self-efficacy in embroidery translated into self-efficacy for knitting a more complex piece, and now I have a stack of handknitted sweaters in my closet.
#4 really resonates-- without aiming toward a new skill, I can definitely get into a stale rut. 🙏