There Is That Ridiculous Hill Again
There is that ridiculous hill again.
Except it does not look quite as ridiculous anymore.
You have ridden it before. Your heart still speeds up, your breathing still gets heavier and your legs still have work to do. But now you know something you did not know on those first rides:
I can do this.
That feeling did not appear from nowhere. You came back, your body adapted, you became more capable and you experienced yourself succeeding at something that had been difficult.
That creates achievement.
And achievement gives your brain evidence.
I made it up that hill. I can ride that distance now. I got better. I did something I wasn't sure I could do.
There is a scientific name for part of what is developing here. Psychologists call it self-efficacy, which means confidence in your ability to successfully carry out a particular action. It is not simply telling yourself, “I can do anything.” Your brain is considerably harder to fool than that. Self-efficacy grows partly from experiences that provide actual evidence: I did that. I can do it again.
Look at what has happened so far.
First, friends + fun made those original experiences enjoyable enough to repeat. Second, repeating them gave your body and brain opportunities to adapt and learn. Third: Improvement created competence, I've got this, and achievement, Hmm. I actually did it.
Friends + Fun → Repetition → Adaptation → Competence → Achievement
And now confidence grows. But something else can grow with it:
What you find fun can change.
Getting Better Becomes Fun Too
At first, much of the fun may have been riding with friends, talking, laughing and being together. That does not disappear. Social connection can remain part of why you keep coming back.
But getting better becomes fun too. Doing something today that you could not do a few weeks ago feels different. So does discovering that something which once felt enormous is now manageable.
And that can change what you do next. There is that ridiculous hill again. You ride it once. Then you look back at it. Maybe today you decide to do it again.
My legs likely want to have a word with me.
But notice what just happened. Nobody told you to ride it twice. Nobody assigned the challenge. Nobody was standing there deciding what you should attempt next.
You chose it.
That is an important change. The challenge is becoming personally relevant because you decided what you wanted to try. Perhaps twice up the hill is your challenge. Your friend might want to ride farther instead. Someone else might want to go faster, learn a new skill or simply enjoy the ride without turning the afternoon into the Tour de France.
There does not have to be one correct challenge. What matters is that you increasingly have some say in it.
Physical activity is now beginning to move from something other people arrange toward something you help direct.
At first, perhaps a friend asked you to come riding. Your family planned something. A teacher introduced an activity you had never tried before.
Now You Begin to Initiate It
Those experiences matter because they get you through the door. But eventually something different can happen. One afternoon, nobody asks you to go. You ask, “Want to go riding?” Or maybe you simply decide to go yourself.
That is a very different moment from those first rides. Physical activity is no longer happening only because somebody else organized it. You are beginning to initiate it.
Agency
That growing ability to make choices and act on them is called agency. In this case, it is active health agency. You are becoming increasingly capable of influencing your own physical activity: choosing it, helping arrange it, deciding what challenge makes sense and eventually initiating some of it yourself.
And Look at What Happened to “Motivation”
And look at what happened to “motivation.” You did not sit around waiting for it to arrive. At first, you were having fun with friends, so you came back. Then you got better, and getting better became part of the fun.
Friends and fun have not become less important. What you enjoy has simply expanded. Now fun might also include learning something, accomplishing something difficult, choosing the next challenge or discovering that you can do more than you could before.
Fun → Come Back → Adapt → Improve → Achieve → Build Confidence → Choose → Initiate
A few weeks ago, that ridiculous hill had you wondering whether you were going to survive it.
Now you're considering doing it twice.
That was fun. Let's do it again.
Maybe this time, you're the one who asks.
That is the seeds of agency starting to germinate.
And yes, it begins with something as simple as:
That was fun. Let's do it again.
And eventually become:
I want to do this. Let's go.