What Identity Has to Do with Motivation
The Motivation Series, Part Four
Welcome to the fourth installment of the motivation series, where we’re looking at ways we can foster motivation in support of maintaining an exercise routine. You can find the previous installments here.
This meme cracks me up every time I see it. Taken from one of the best scenes in Incredibles 2, which is a masterpiece of humor in family dynamics, it features Dash, who’s always saying hilarious things. In a family argument about whether or not the kids can use their superpowers in public, he delivers this impassioned declaration: “It defines who I am.” Point being that his superpowers can’t be separated from who he is.
Dash and Violet and, let’s be honest, Mr. Incredible himself are all motivated to use their powers because their powers are intrinsically tied to their personal identities. Mr. Incredible is who he is because of his super strength. Violet’s gloomy preteen personality and her boundary-pushing defiance directly relate to her powers of invisibility and force fields. Dash — I mean, his name says it all. Super speed makes him, himself.
The Incredibles franchise is all about identity. Intentionally or not, the writers of the movies understand that identity drives us in all aspects of our lives. How we define ourselves directly influences the actions we take. Identity is a powerful motivator.
This isn’t just pop psychology. An ample amount of research on exercise motivation highlights a positive correlation between identity and both intrinsic motivators and engagement in physical activity.
In one study, integrated regulation, “an individual’s belief that a behavior is an important part of his or her identity,” was the strongest and only significant predictor of long-term engagement in exercise. A strong exercise identity has been associated with characteristics and behaviors — like self-efficacy, commitment, and the use of self-governing strategies — that are connected to sticking with a long-term exercise routine. One literature review also found that identity could work “as a moderator of the intention-behavior relationship,” helping intentions effectively result in action.
In an October 2024 study of former college athletes — a population that tends to struggle with the loss of their athletic identity1 — “exercise identity was the strongest independent predictor of physical activity … and appears to be a key factor in promoting physical activity after retirement from competitive sports.”
The reason for this is fairly straightforward: If you identify as a certain type of person, you are more likely to engage in activities that align with that profile. If you think of yourself as a dancer, you’ll be actively looking for opportunities to dance. If you consider yourself an active person, you won’t be caught spending all your spare time on the couch. It’s the difference between “I am a runner” and “I run sometimes.”
In fact, strong exercise identity can lead to negative emotions when the person isn’t exercising as much as they want to. The discrepancy between identity and action causes internal discomfort — discomfort that, over the long term, will likely either lead to a change in behavior or a change in identity.
In the same study of college athletes, exercise identity was tied to more intrinsic kinds of motivation, especially integrated and identified regulation. But when the researchers examined motivation types and accounted for the influence of exercise identity, only identified regulation — which is less intrinsic and defined as “being motivated to exercise because they value exercise and have personal goals for their exercise” — was correlated with physical activity.
Why didn’t the more intrinsic integrated regulation stand out? Because, the authors posit, exercise identity is so closely related to integrated regulation that integrated regulation can’t have more influence than identity itself. By controlling for the effect of identity, you erase the effect of integrated regulation — that motivation disappears.
This tells us that exercise identity is fundamental to intrinsic motivation.
I won’t rehash what I’ve already written about intrinsic motivation — you can find it here and here and here. Suffice it to say, if you want to develop a long-term exercise routine, you need intrinsic motivation and, yes, you have the power to develop it yourself.
The research described above shows us that it’s also helpful to:
Foster an Exercise Identity
If you’ve never identified yourself as an athlete or someone who works out — and if, perhaps, you’ve identified yourself in the opposite way: as someone who doesn’t work out, who dreads exercise, who hates gyms — it may seem that making exercise part of your identity is entirely out of the question. But you have agency over your identity (to an extent), and if you struggle with this one, you likely have the most to gain.
Let’s be clear: You don’t have to become some kind of meathead gym bro for identity to fuel your exercise motivation. Identity is not ego, first of all, and this piece of your identity doesn’t need to dominate your entire life. Instead, we’re looking for ways that exercise can naturally integrate with who you are.
1. Find the connection between fitness and who you already are.
What do you value? What do you enjoy? What’s important to you? If it’s helpful, scribble these things on a piece of paper — and don’t leave anything out. If you love staying up late and binge-watching sitcoms from the ’70s, say that.
Once you’re done, look at what you’ve written. Circle anything that remotely relates to physical mobility, strength, health, balance, agility, flexibility, and so on.
If you’re a mural artist who values painting things from the top of a ladder, guess what? The right fitness program can help you build and maintain the overall balance and upper-body endurance to do your work. If you’re a mom who’s short on time and exhausted from chasing after a toddler all day, a consistent exercise routine could give you a much-needed release and make it easier to keep up with your kid. If you’re aging and want to maintain your mental faculties well into your 80s and 90s, exercising will help your mind stay sharp.
The whole idea is to find ways that your priorities and values relate to fitness. A consistent exercise routine supports many things: physical, mental, and cognitive health, energy levels, endurance, balance, flexibility, resiliency. You don’t have to be in the gym chasing a 300-pound squat or training for a marathon. You can simply be there to maintain your ability to do the things you enjoy. Those things are your motivation, and they can help you develop your exercise identity.
2. Commit to an exercise program.
In a study published in 2020 by Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 276 female subjects were assigned to 16-week exercise interventions. After those 16 weeks, the exercise identities of the women increased, and at a follow-up six months after the initial study, “greater change in exercise identity was associated with higher levels of exercise behavior.”
The study demonstrated the possibility that consistently participating in exercise can strengthen exercise identity — and strengthening that identity can have a long-term impact on a person’s level of physical activity.
Sometimes, what we need to do is simply commit. Show up for a class on a weekly basis, be consistent, follow through on what we say we want to do. From there, identity can develop organically.
As the study’s authors explain it, repeating a behavior over time can strengthen a person’s perception of their abilities, while also enhancing their perceived commitment to the exercise program. Both of those perceptions — of ability and commitment — “may predict the degree to which one identifies as an exerciser.” This leads to a positive feedback loop: “identity supports behavioral maintenance over time, which, in turn, promotes identification as an exerciser.”
In the study, it didn’t matter how many sessions a person attended during that 16-week period or how long those sessions were. It just mattered that they showed up with some regularity.
“Changes in exercise identity may occur even if exercise intensity is low and/or if exercise bouts are short (i.e., 20 minutes),” the study says. “Repeatedly engaging in even modest amounts of exercise for a prolonged time period may promote increased exercise identity.”
So try this: Commit to attending just one exercise class or going to the gym just one time per week for the next 16 weeks — or the first 16 weeks of the year. If you start the week of January 5, the last week would be April 20–26, the week of Easter. If all you do some weeks is walk on the treadmill for 15 minutes, that counts, but show up and do the thing.
The study’s goal wasn’t to increase the women’s exercise identity. The 16-week programs they engaged in didn’t emphasize identity at all. But participation helped shift their self-concept. So as you show up for each session in the new year, don’t be thinking so hard about trying to identify yourself with exercise. Just show up and see what happens over time.
3. At the very least, stop saying things like “I don’t work out.”
Words have power, and the words you say out loud about yourself — even if whispered in a quiet room alone — can box you in more than anything that anyone else says about you. If you catch yourself saying things like, “I don’t work out” or “I hate exercise” or “I could never do that,” hit pause.
When we say things like this, we are building an identity opposed to the exercise identity we want. Our goal is to identify ourselves with exercise, not against it.
I’m not going to tell you to reflect on where those words come from, because they’re not worth your time and attention. But don’t allow yourself to say them. If you can, find something positive to say instead:
I’m impressed that she can do that. I wonder how much she worked to get there?
It takes a lot of dedication to achieve that.
I bet that took a lot of training.
Maybe I’ll try that someday.
Don’t tear yourself down. You might be surprised at how capable you are.
The ultimate goal of developing an exercise identity is building a consistent, long-term habit of exercise, one that requires less mental effort for you to show up and participate. If you don’t currently think of yourself as someone who exercises, use these tips and check back in 16 weeks, six months, or a year. If you still don’t call yourself an exerciser, but you’re being more consistently active on a weekly basis, consider that a win — because it is.
Recommended Reads
Women Weren’t “Tough Enough” to Finish the Barkley Marathons—Until Jasmin Paris Came Along (Outside)
Why Am I Not Sore After a Workout? Does That Mean It’s Not Effective? (Self)
Winter Workout Tips, From Scientists Who Study Extreme Cold (NY Times)
What’s coming next?
WBC’s year-end ICYMI
Athlete identity relates to a person’s sport, while exercise identity encompasses a wide variety of fitness-related activities.