For those not familiar with the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler romcom canon, Fifty First Dates is a movie about a womanizing veterinarian who falls for a beautiful artist after a meet cute at a diner and some flirtatious breakfast banter. They agree to meet again at the same spot the next morning for breakfast. But there’s a catch: the next day, Drew Barrymore’s character has no idea who Adam Sandler’s character is. It just so happens she has amnesia and every night as she sleeps, her memories are erased. Adam’s got to start from scratch to win her over every single day.

It’s an unrealistic premise for a romance, but a great analogy for the psychological resistance we can encounter when we set out to achieve a goal, especially when the goal is taking us outside our comfort zone. For example, maybe you want to establish a routine of going to the gym, but it’s been a long time since you worked out and you’re feeling pretty intimidated just thinking about it. It may take days or weeks just to get yourself to the gym. When you get there, you may feel self-conscious at first, but over the course of your session you get into the rhythm of your routine and it’s probably not as bad as you anticipated. Maybe it’s even somewhat enjoyable. Perhaps it even feels great. You figure that coming back regularly should be no problem now that you’ve cleared the initial hurdle, broken the seal, and gotten yourself to the gym. 

And then something seems to reset overnight, and the next day it’s just as hard to convince yourself to go. So you skip a day, and then the next, and the next. Before you know it, so much time has gone by that it’s like starting from scratch again to get yourself to the gym. 

Why does this happen, and how can we deal with it? I think it happens because no matter how good it feels once we’re in the flow of a new activity, there’s discomfort involved in starting anything unfamiliar, and our brains are wired to prefer comfort and familiarity. Until the unfamiliar task becomes a familiar routine (also known as a habit), initiating the new activity is met with resistance, despite our best intentions. 

It takes time to establish a habit, so in the beginning “breaking the seal” should be thought of as a daily practice, rather than a one time event. There are differing opinions among researchers about exactly how long it takes to establish a habit (which makes sense, since there is really no one-size-fits-all solution for anything involving human beings), but it’s safe to assume it will take many weeks and possibly months to establish a habit in an area outside our comfort zone. And that means we are going to have to convince, coax and cajole ourselves over and over to engage in the activities necessary to progress towards our goal. 

In some cases, the habit will take a long time to set. After seven years of consistent strength training, I’m at a point where I actually look forward to these workouts. But for the first couple of years, even though I noticed an immediate improvement in my mood, outlook and even my physical pain both during and after a strength training workout, I dreaded going. I both knew I would feel incredible after the workout AND I very much did not want to do it. 

In some cases, the habit may never become fully automatic and we may have to spend time convincing ourselves every day for the rest of our lives that yes, we really do have to do the thing again today. For me, eating healthy and staying away from foods that taste delicious but leave me feeling depleted will probably always require a daily reset. So will finishing my morning shower with cold water, going to bed early, flossing, and many other practices that contribute to my well being. 

So if we accept the reality that moving toward some goals will be like 50 First Dates, and we’ll have to treat our motivation as having nightly amnesia, what can we do to increase our chances of success? In the movie, Adam’s Sandler’s character creates a process to set Drew Barrymore’s character up for success every morning, from the moment she wakes up. He streamlines a method to bring her up to speed and remind her who she is and what her life looks like. I think we can take some inspiration from this. Below are some of the tools I’ve used to bring my motivation up to speed, set myself up for success and keep me engaging in daily fitness and wellness practices until they become habits (or in some cases, despite the fact that they stubbornly refuse to become habits).

Because I love a good acronym, I call this list of tools DATES.

1. Deterrence: When I was trying to establish an early morning workout regimen a decade ago, I signed up for classes that charged a fee for no-show’s and late cancellations. I didn’t enjoy getting up at 5 am to get myself to a 6 am workout class, but I really didn’t want to pay those no show fees. 

2. Accountability: It’s a lot harder to bail on a workout if someone else is relying on you to show up, so find a fitness buddy (or better yet, multiple fitness buddies) and set up some fitness dates. Often, the only thing that gets me to keep a workout promise to myself is my desire not to leave my workout buddy hanging.

3. Throw some $$$ at it: When I first started strength training, I hired a trainer to program workouts for me, show me proper technique, and monitor my form to ensure I didn’t hurt myself. These were all great reasons to hire a trainer, but a benefit I didn’t anticipate is that when I invested in my fitness by paying a trainer, it made the ritual more valuable to me. 

4. Expedite: As much as possible, I clear any hurdles that stand between me and getting my workout done. I workout first thing in the morning because I know that as the day goes on, my schedule can get away from me, my motivation gets less reliable and the part of me that just wants to chill gets more convincing. It’s harder to talk myself out of it at 6 am, as long as I have made it easy to start the workout. This means having my workout clothes already laid out and my workday clothes packed, so all I have to do is get dressed, grab my gym bag and go. 

5. Socialize: This one is a little different from Accountability, above. In adult life, it can be harder to make friends. But it’s much easier in the context of activities we enjoy, because we’re automatically in a group of people who have at least one thing in common. Fitness in particular is well suited to building friendships, because people let their emotional guards down when they are engaged in physically demanding tasks, and there’s a sense that we are all in it together. And as a bonus, the emotional appeal of an opportunity to chat and socialize can be a draw in itself when the physical part of fitness seems daunting.

Those are my approaches to convincing myself to keep moving towards my fitness goals day by day. Do you have any others? Let me know in the comments!