Weekly Refresh: Rekindle the flame.

Hi Fabulous Traveler,

You’ve been doing great; congratulations on reaching this level! There are only 2 weeks left in the Journey. Now that you’ve started exercising more often, it's time to put lock-ins into place.

Lock-In

What’s a lock-in? It’s a commitment you make to yourself when you’re motivated and on a roll. In the future, if you ever feel unmotivated or lose the habit for any reason, your lock-ins will be there to get you back on track. You can think of it as getting a vaccine when you’re healthy to prevent problems down the road.

A fresh start

In a recent study, Katherine Milkman, Ph.D., and her colleagues at the Wharton School of Business found that weekends and holidays are widely considered as fresh start days: they demarcate the passage of time, creating a new mental accounting period. Weekends can help you relegate past imperfections to the previous period, take a step back, and re-motivate yourself for the new week. Mistakes from the past week are now lessons learned, and you're ready for a fresh start.

As you build your exercise habit, you may have to rekindle the fire of motivation every few weeks; that is, use the weekend as an opportunity to revisit your lock-in and make a fresh start. Once the habit becomes ingrained, however, you'll feel restless whenever you forget to exercise and the habit will be easier to maintain. To reach this level, you need to continue exercising regularly until it becomes a part of your personality. Using lock-ins to help maintain your commitment, work to build your habit until it feels easier and more comfortable to complete the habit than to skip it.

The weekly flame

This week, you going to experiment with the Weekly Flame. This is a weekly “lock-in” ritual that can be done on Sundays and will only take you 10 minutes. The Weekly Flame consists of two parts.

An exercise-related positive memory

In a study aiming to encourage people to exercise more, participants who sat down and wrote about a recent exercise-related positive memory were more likely to exercise in the coming week. In the first part of your weekly ritual, you will take a few minutes to visualize and remember one recent positive memory of exercising. While visualizing, try to make the image as vivid as you can: remember the sounds, the smells, the sights. Re-experience the feelings from your exercise. The more vivid the visualization, the more effective it will be.

Commit to yourself

The second part of the ritual is answering the question, “Am I going to exercise this week?” By answering "Yes!" to this question, you will be making a commitment and a promise to yourself, and you’re the last person you’ll want to disappoint. When you make a promise to yourself, fully knowing you can follow through, breaking the promise is very difficult. You don’t have any good excuses to tell yourself when you know you can keep the commitment!

This Week’s Plan

There's a one-time action and a goal for you, Fabulous Traveler.

Your one-time action

Add a new Fresh Start custom ritual that happens on either Saturday or Sunday at a predetermined hour. This is a ritual that will act as a lock-in to rekindle the motivation for exercising and protect yourself from future failures. Create two alarms, such as one at 11 am, and the other at 8 pm. This way, if you miss the first one, you'll still have another chance.

Add two custom habits to the new ritual:

• Visualize one great memory of exercising
• “Am I going to exercise this week?”

When you’re visualizing the memory, picture the details as vividly as possible. Recall the exact situation and how you felt after exercising as best you can. Remember the pleasure of accomplishment. Consider how Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest American football coaches in history, described that sense of accomplishment: “I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.”

Your goal

It’s time to accelerate. If you're running, aim for longer periods since you now have more cardiovascular endurance and your legs are stronger. If you’ve chosen another preferred exercise, step it up in length of time, speed, or weight. Tap Accept to commit.

Fabulous Traveler, you’re almost done with the Exercise Journey, and it’s been a great ride! Don’t lose sight of the end goal: not exercise itself, but for exercise to give you more energy to accomplish your core routines, those that will help you move forward in life.

The letters and techniques along this Journey are just guides; it is what you make of them that counts.

To your success, Fabulous Traveler!