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A Counterintuitive Strategy for Building a Daily Exercise Habit

Rob Hardy
Better Humans
Published in
18 min readJul 21, 2017
Photo: Pexels

For the past three months, I’ve been focusing a great deal of energy on building a daily exercise habit. Unless you’re new to the world of personal development, I don’t need to tell you why I’m doing this. The potential upside is huge: Lost weight. More energy. Higher confidence and self-esteem. Stable mental health. Improved ability to do exciting physical activities. There’s a lot at stake here.

And as someone who’s been overweight for years, this one elusive habit could fundamentally improve my life in a number of ways.

Yet, like a lot of folks, I’ve tried this before. I’ve made overambitious New Year’s resolutions, midyear “get back on track” resolutions, and spur-of-the-moment “I’m going to change my life right now” resolutions.

In my attempts to make exercise palatable and consistent, I’ve burned through gym memberships, home exercise equipment, and online workout video subscriptions. I’ve pored over blogs and books and courses. I’ve cycled through phases of inspiration and excitement and action, only to fall back into burnout, self-criticism, and lethargy.

Basically, my success to this point has been what you might call laughably lackluster. I’ve fallen off the wagon more times than you could count on 20 hands.

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Better Humans
Better Humans

Published in Better Humans

Better Humans is one of the largest and oldest Medium’s publications on self-improvement and personal development. Our goal is to bring you the world’s most helpful writing on human potential.

Rob Hardy
Rob Hardy

Written by Rob Hardy

Freelance copywriter, founder of Filmmaker Freedom, and builder of online audiences. filmmakerfreedom.com

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