In the second article in the “5 Keys to Fitness” series, Discover Your Motive, we solidified your ultimate goal and, through some honest self-interrogation, dug deep to find your underlying motive. If you don’t have a clearly-defined ultimate goal and a deep motive with an emotional base, stop reading now and do the work before you continue.

I’m not kidding. Don’t read another word if you don’t have those two crucial elements defined, and don’t start reading again until you have them. If you’ve already done the work, read on! Read on!

In this article I’m going to share an insight I’ve had after training hundreds of people with widely varying goals. But first, I’d like to briefly talk about a close friend of mine.

She grew up in an abusive home. One day I was over at her house and she told me the harrowing story of her childhood. I had known some of it, but not all of it. She told me it had caused her to believe she didn’t deserve success, didn’t deserve to have nice things.

She’s stronger than her issues. Stronger than her past. Because she has created a greater herself within herself – an entirely self-produced vision of who she is – and she uses it to steer her goals, motivations and decisions.It took her years of therapy to get through this. But finally, the right thing was said at a personal empowerment seminar and it struck her in her reptilian core. She realized that, although she would always be the sum of all that had happened to her, that did not, would not, could not stop her from overcoming the things that weren’t true, or were damaging her even ten, twenty years later.

She is now one of the most successful women I know. She plays soccer – successfully – with women twenty years younger than she is. How has she done it? How does she find it inside to overcome both her childhood and Father Time? Because she’s stronger than her issues. Stronger than her past. Because she has created a greater herself within herself – an entirely self-produced vision of who she is – and she uses it to steer her goals, motivations and decisions. Business-wise. Socially. Exercise. What she eats.

And so can you.

An important truth to grasp is that we all have issues. Some more than others, but regardless of who we are we all struggle with the negative thoughts beating us up. We all struggle with laziness and procrastination. And some people never overcome their issues.

But that’s not going to be you.

Yesterday I asked you to drill down to the very bottom of your goal to discover your Motive. You should be able to easily complete the following sentence:

I need to (insert your GOAL here) because (insert your MOTIVE here).

The key insight for me – the insight I alluded to earlier – is that the crucial aspect of achieving your goal isn’t how much you exercise or how long, it isn’t eating a particular thing or following a detailed eating plan. Because everyone tries to do it that way, and so many people – most people – fail at it. Why doesn’t just having a fitness and nutrition plan work? Because that puts your fitness, your weight loss, you body fat, your nutrition, all of it, at the mercy of the whims and weaknesses of the moment.

The key to success when it comes to ACHIEVING your fitness goals is realizing, understanding and directing your associations. While the key to success in MAINTAINING a goal you’ve achieved is your self-identity as a fit person.

Today we’re going to work on your associations.

So what are associations? Associations are how you feel about something, and whether you associate pleasure or pain with that particular thing. I don’t know what you think of the infomercial and self-help king Tony Robbins, but he nailed it when he summarized that all human behavior is driven by either the need to avoid pain or the desire to gain pleasure. The way that is phrased is telling. Avoiding pain is a need. Gaining pleasure is a desire. Needs are obviously going to trump desires every time. And that’s the way it is with pain and pleasure. All of us will go further to avoid pain than to gain pleasure. Avoiding pain is part of your biological encoding. It’s a survival mechanism, along the same lines as the fight or flight response.

Your associations in regard to fitness are, on a base level, how you assign pleasure or pain to the various aspects of fitness. For example, let’s say your goal is weight loss. If the pain you associate with dieting is more than the pleasure you associate with losing weight and inches, then you’re never going to reach your goals. If, deep down, you associate (the pain of) unwanted attention with looking great, then you’ll always fall short of looking great. And you’ll wonder why diets never work for you, or exercise programs never deliver what they promise.

But the reality is that the right kind of nutrition plan will work, and and the right kind of exercise program will deliver, IF you can realize what associations are sabotaging you. Once realized and understood, you can change your associations and free yourself to achieve what you want physically.

Take the first HUGE step toward being the rare person able to control and direct your exercise “destiny,” and set yourself up for success now in achieving what you want to achieve, and maintaining it for the rest of your life, seemingly without effort.So let’s work on how to change your associations. Here’s how:

1) Think about pain and pleasure in your own life, and how you associate it with diet and exercise. Look at it objectively and acknowledge the reality of the roles the avoidance of pain and the gaining of pleasure play in your life, and how they steer your moment-by-moment decisions.

2) Ask yourself: In the past, when you’ve exercised or not exercised, followed a good diet or not followed a good diet, what pain has kept from you from taking action and following through? Write this down.

3) Keeping with past behavior, what pleasure have you gained from not taking action and following through? Donut deliciousness? Sedentary sofa/TV life? Write it down.

4) Simple question: How has being the slave to Pain and Pleasure worked for you so far? Simple answer: If you don’t look and feel the way you want to, what you’ve done to this point isn’t working.

5) Let’s fast forward to Now. Keeping in mind what has held you back in the past, how will continuing to allow your pain and pleasure associations to control you affect you in the future? What will it cost you? How will that pain feel, if you continually go through the back and forth of exercising/not-exercising, eating great/eating not-so-great? How will that pain feel next week? Next year? Five years from now? Ten years? Wouldn’t it be better to get in control of your associations right now, instead of letting them control you the rest of your life?

6) What could you gain, what pleasure could you realize, by taking control of your associations right now, and directing them to feed into – and enable – your success now and in years to come?

By teaching yourself to recognize your associations and assign pain and pleasure in an empowering manner, instead of letting them control you, you will take the first HUGE step toward being the rare person able to control and direct your exercise “destiny,” and set yourself up for success now in achieving what you want to achieve, and maintaining it for the rest of your life, seemingly without effort.

Without effort? How is that possible? I’m glad you asked. We’ll talk about it in the next article.