Give it five minutes

That means I can’t make any decisions about how long I’ll exercise until after the first 5 minutes. Why? Because until those endorphins kick in, I often feel like quitting.

I was reminded of this on the treadmill earlier this week. We’ve been doing tough leg work at the gym, and I recently resumed running. My legs were tired as soon as I powered up the treadmill and the belt started to turn. If you think I was happily anticipating a nice workout, think again. My internal dialogue went something like this: Okay, I said I’d do 10 intervals, but this is really hard, so I’ll do 6. Or 4. Maybe 5, tops.

It was all I could think about for the first few minutes. Then the endorphins came riding in and it got better. Still felt tough, but I knew I could do all 10 intervals as planned.

Give it 5 minutes. Don’t make any decisions about quitting until after that.

It’s good rule for anything we’re attempting, because often the stuff we really want to do is hard. If we gave in before we really got going, there’d be unfulfilled dreams littering the streets! Give it a little time for things to really kick in before you make any decisions about abandoning your effort. That may mean 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days or 5 months. Depends upon how big your goal is.

This is one of my favorite ways to keep going when the going feels rough. Try it and see!