Maintaining a positive attitude
toward fitness is imperative, as few people stick to a program if they
feel negatively about it. A person who wants to develop a positive
attitude about fitness can benefit from the insights of two fields
founded 100 years apart: sport psychology and positive psychology.
Sport Psychology
The
insights of sport psychology and positive psychology were initially
developed for very different groups: athletes and people with severe
depression. But these ideas can be adapted by the average couch potato.
Sport psychology trains psychologists to help athletes achieve their
best possible performances. The field was founded in 1898 by Norman
Tripplett, a psychologist at Indiana University, who published a study
documenting that racing cyclists rode faster when another cyclist was
around.
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Sports Attitudes
Sport
psychologists carefully studied athletes' mental attitudes. The
Association for Applied Sport Psychology, in an essay titled, "Resources
for Athletes," has prepared advice on what sport psychologists have
learned about positive attitudes and fitness. The association advises
athletes to develop a "cue statement" or positive affirmation--such as
"calm, confident, in control"--to recite when things are not going well.
Athletes are encouraged to maintain a "glass half-full" outlook,
optimistically anticipating the best possible outcome in every
situation. Performance goals should be realistic, moderate and
measurable. Creating mental movies or structured daydreaming, in which
positive outcomes are repeatedly visualized, also helps improve
performance.
Positive Psychology
A
2007 Positive Psychology News Daily article by Senia Maymin, MBA, MAPP,
titled "What is positive psychology?," describes how positive
psychology emerged in 1998. Dr. Martin Seligman, then president-elect of
the American Psychological Association, announced a new focus on
studying ways to improve positive mental attributes. Dr. Seligman was
tired of psychology's previous overemphasis on mental illness.
Psychologists subsequently undertook numerous studies to determine how
people can cultivate positive attitudes for many purposes, including
fitness.
Positive Outlook
Marie-Josee
Salvas Shaar, MAPP, applied the findings of positive psychology to
fitness in a 2008 article for Positive Psychology News Daily titled "Top
Ten Stimuli to Exercise Your Body." Salvas Shaar recommends that people
embarking on a new fitness program try to associate it with a positive
stimulus, such as listening to their favorite music before starting the
exercises. Using personal mental strengths to sustain interest in the
fitness program is helpful--if someone likes learning new things, that
person should try to learn a new exercise frequently. Keeping a journal
about a fitness program and marking off each goal as it is achieved can
be a powerful incentive to stick with a program. Because physical
exercises create new synapses in the brain, spending an hour after
exercising doing a pleasurable mental activity can gradually associate
the fitness program with fun.
Positive Attitude Help
Both
sport psychology and positive psychology have produced large numbers of
books, DVDs, videos and audio files with advice on how to cultivate a
positive attitude. It is very easy for a couch potato to create a
personally designed combination of techniques from both fields that will
bolster a positive attitude toward fitness.
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