Stairway to Motivation

I moved into an apartment a few years ago in the south of Paris. It was a lovely area just outside the southern part of the city and the neighbors were friendly but quiet and kept to themselves most of the time. I was quite excited when I found the place and was looking forward to moving in after signing up shortly before. Now in Paris you can get apartment blocks that are quite old or that were built a long time ago and so because of that, face the possibility of no modern day facilities that the average joe would expect in their new place. No concierge (although who has that if you live in an average ‘normal’ apartment here?), no cleaning service and no lift. To top that we didn’t find a place on the ground or first floor like normal folk would .or the second. or the third. No, our new castle was on the ..fifth floor! No lifts.

‘You’ve got to be joking’ was the first thing I thought when we got there to move our stuff in. And we had to climb every single one of those ceramic tiles leading to the fifth floor. God I hated those stairs!

It wasn’t really funny when you got to the bottom of the stairs(like from work for example) to then have to climb up every one of those steps.

So no matter where I went everyday I always had to face the prospect of having to climb those long winding steps when I returned. If it was the end of the work day( and everyone knows how it feels being exhausted when you get back home), I would silently take a deep sigh before having to go through climbing up AGAIN. Sometimes I swear I would have to tipped good money to other people in the building block to give me a piggy bank and carry me up those steps.

After a few weeks of Doing this on repeat like in the film ‘Groundhog Day’,I decided I’d had enough!

How could I make this daily mt. everest like climb a more enjoyable experience? Well it so happens that at about the same time I had stopped most of the sports activities I used to do especially football(soccer) and was beginning to feel unfit. I was struggling a bit to find time to actually participate in any sport activities as I was usually working all week and away from Paris at the weekend. I decided to try an experiment. What if instead of planning for some time to run in the park I could just use the stairs to get exercise needed? It would be just for two to three minutes but it would be everyday,all day.

Something interesting happened after this. Motivation automatically kicked in and I started to look forward to actually doing it everyday. I would find myself rushing from the metro station to get to the front of my apartment so I could do my runs. I learned almost by accident that when you put a system in place and you don’t have to plan it everytime, motivation happens like magic. And I felt like I was maintaining my level of fitness too. A few weeks after I started doing this I found that when I went off to play the odd football or even Frisbee game,(I love playing these two games) I was in great shape to keep up with all the others in the game. I’ve since moved to another apartment on the first floor(which now has a lift), but I tell you now I miss those stairs!