The best advice I've ever heard on motivation is from my first personal trainer, Jim Guimond, who said that the reason why you work out has to be big enough in order for you to overcome the obstacles that will face you during the process. As Jim says, if your "why" is big enough, you will overcome the obstacles.
I had a pretty big "why" when I started with Jim in May of 2015 the process that led me to triathlon. Having been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and few days earlier (with an A1c of 13.7%), I was all too aware of the horrible consequences that would befall me if I didn't change my life right then and there. So initially, it was a life and death decision to get into fitness activity.
The "why" changes though over time. Now that the immediate danger of diabetes-related complications as abated, those initial life and death motivations have been replaced with other goals: to finish another half ironman next summer and a marathon in the Fall, to finish a full ironman one day down the road and to continue to see how far I can go in the transformation from couch surfer to athlete.
Beware of the superficial, short-term goals of losing x pounds by x date, or looking good for my wedding/graduation/birthday. You need a motivation powerful enough to take you beyond a few weeks or months that you can carry with you when things start to go wrong and, believe me, things always start to go wrong at some point.
I will be posting later tonight my interview ith Jim, where he discusses at length the search für real, lasting motivation in his clients and we discuss my first scary, tentative steps away from a short remaining life of chronic illness and into a hopefully long life of physical activity. I will update this post with a link and I hope you all get as much out of Jim's insights as I did.
Jim and I at Charlotte's 24 Hours of Booty charity ride in July 2016