How To Get Your Heart Rate Up

Your heart rate seems off. Is it up? Down? You’re not sure. It might be because you feel depressed, unmotivated, or sorry for yourself. You decide to take a chill day. That day of isolation turns into a week, a couple of months, and now a couple of years? Its trickled into your relationships. You’ve lost your energy to exercise. You don’t care about your bills. You’ve lost sight of your goals. You don’t even have any goals! You wake up each day and you’re like, “I really don’t know what I’m working towards.” That ONE chill day has become your life.

Well, that ends today.

You just have to make a decision to change it. Listen, I’m going to get real with you…

You’ve got to stop wallowing in it. You’ve got to stop focusing on it. Guess what? Burn out is normal. It happens!

Let’s try a little sense memory exercise…

Relax. Get comfortable. Shoulders back. Deep breaths.

I want you to picture (with eyes closed, but after reading this paragraph first!) that you’re in your car. Look in the rear view mirror and see the police. The police are about to pull you over, right? And the sirens are going! You have no idea why, but there they are. Imagine this scene… GO!

Now I want you to think about any scenario where you would feel that same fight or flight response. That heightened awareness where you feel a bit of fear, a little of the unknown. Maybe even your cheeks have become a little flushed. Your heart rate goes up. There’s almost a nervousness. Guess what that energy is?

Adrenaline, my friends.

Adrenaline is the drug you need for motivation. It produces creativity. It makes us take physical action and, often times, mental action. 

If you want to improve your life and get things done, you need to learn to call up that motivation and that enthusiasm on demand when you need it. 

That said, hear me loud and clear: EXERCISE does that more effectively than anything else you can do. Put aside the weight loss, forget about your pursuit of having a six-pack or fitting into a smaller pair of jeans. Exercise will give you truly life-changing things, like:

• More confidence
• The ability to be super productive
• Get you focused and alert
• Happier disposition
• Patience, rational, balanced, motivated, and… (I have to force myself to STOP!)

If there was a drug on the market that delivered all of those things and one of the possible side effects could be that you looked really fantastic and you live longer and you could wear a smaller pair of jeans and you had strong abdominals… wouldn’t you pay whatever it cost to take that drug? 

The answer is yes. Tell me, why aren’t you taking that drug every day? Hmmmm?

I’m not saying you have to run a marathon, jump up and down, or do the most intense crawl through a tunnel work out. I’m just saying, you need to get your heart rate up.

I hope it’s not you who loves to give me all the reasons why you can’t exercise. And, oh my Lord, these peeps find me everywhere! Facebook inbox, Snapchat chat, Instagram direct message, Whole Foods, on the plane, wherever!

Epiphany: maybe I’m too easily reached!

“But, Chalene, I’ve got this elbow thing / I’m thinking about getting knee surgery / I haven’t been able to exercise since I did such and such to my hip…”

Are you kidding me? 

True story, I’ve met people with no legs who still find a way to exercise. Suck it up, buttercup. 

Enough with your excuses. 

How are YOU going to get your heart rate up today? Recall something provoking in your mind or move your body?

Let me know in the comments!