Couldn’t disagree more, but I think we may have hit on a natural split in what motivates people. I like goals and metrics. When a doctor told me I needed to lose weight or I’d become diabetic, that wasn’t what motivated me at all. In fact, the anxiety that came with that potential outcome manifested itself as super low-energy depressive episodes. That terror actually got in the way of me doing the work. What worked for me was deciding “Okay, I’m gonna get a whiteboard calendar, and mark every day that I do strength training in blue, meditation in green and cardio in pink. Then at the end of each month I’m gonna add them up and see what my totals are.” First month, my goal was to do each of them 3x/week. That felt like a pretty far off goal for someone who is basically sedentary, and I didn’t quite get there the first month. But getting close made it feel possible. Then every time I met a goal I raised it by 2. I eventually got to the point I’m at now, where I work out and meditate 5-6x/week and it’s an odd day where I don’t do at least one of those three activities. My blood glucose and A1C are down to normal, I finished my first 5k in 42 minutes flat and am training to get that time down into the 30s, and I can deadlift my weight and nearly bench press that much as well. I feel better, I look better, my office job is less oppressive because when I get frustrated I can just break out the Mental Health Rocks and work some of that energy out. All of it from positive motivation, even when there was actually a pretty strong negative motivation inasmuch as I really like my eyeballs and feet. Now that I’ve reached my goals wrt how often I work out, I’m setting quantifiable goals for how hard I work out.
I suppose I’m not really disagreeing with you. It’s obvious that this is what works for you, and I can’t negate your lived experience with mine. But what I’m saying is that not everyone is motivated the same way.