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Mayo Clinic Minute: Overcoming emotional barriers to working out
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One of the most popular New Year's resolutions is to get in better shape, but many people fail to deliver on their promise to themselves because of emotional challenges. Danielle Johnson, a wellness physical therapist with the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program offers advice on how to overcome emotional barriers to get yourself on track to become physically fit in 2018.
Journalists: Broadcast-quality video pkg (1:00) is in the downloads. Read the script.
Everyone likes the idea of a New Year's resolution to work out more, but convincing yourself to follow through can be tricky. For many, the key is overcoming emotional challenges like lacking confidence their appearance.
"People really feel like when they see commercials on TV and they see images of people in workout gear, that I don't look like that," Johnson says. "Maybe I don't belong there."
Johnson says sometimes people have to adjust their thinking.
"We should turn that around a little bit and think to yourself, gosh, how proud am I of myself that I'm going to the gym?" she says.
Another common obstacle Johnson hears is that people don't feel athletic enough.
"Know that there are a lot of things that you can do in a gym setting, in an outdoor setting, that really you don't necessarily need to feel really athletic," she says. "You just need to be excited about moving and getting your body moving."
And even those who have tried and failed multiple times to get into working out, they should try again and just find the right exercise they enjoy enough to stick with, Johnson says.
"It's really about finding something that you do enjoy so that you want to do it, so that it seems like something that's not drudgery," Johnson says.
