The night before, committing to a new exercise habit feels like a settled decision. You set the alarm, maybe even lay out your workout kit. But then morning arrives. It’s cold, dark and early. And the plan collapses. Nothing about your goal has changed, yet your willpower has wilted.
What gives? How can our motivation seemingly evaporate completely in mere hours?
The reason, according to Dr Jon Rhodes, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Plymouth in the UK, and co-author of The Choice Point: The Scientifically Proven Method for Achieving Your Goals, has something to do with how the brain weighs the present against the future.
“It’s really a moment-to-moment competition between mental images,” he explains. “At 6am, the sensory reality of warm blankets and tiredness is far more vivid than the abstract idea of future fitness.”
That mismatch between what feels real and what merely sounds sensible helps explain why so much motivational advice falls short. Telling friends your plans, tracking your progress or setting up rewards can add pressure from the outside, but they don’t change the mental images competing in the moment itself. When the alarm goes off, the warmth of your bed still feels rich and immediate, while the benefits of exercise remain distant and abstract – and that’s the contest that decides what you do next.
“If the behaviour relies on pleasing someone else or avoiding guilt, it collapses the moment that external pressure is absent,” Rhodes explains.
“I always think that extrinsic motivation is a good nudge, but intrinsic motivation is the engine room.”
Intrinsic motivation, as you’ll likely know, is motivation that comes from within: a sense that the behaviour itself matters, fits who you are, or delivers something you genuinely value in the moment. When motivation is intrinsic, action feels less like something you’re forcing yourself to do, and more like something that just makes sense – even on cold, early mornings.
And that’s where Functional Imagery Training, or FIT, comes in – a psychological technique now backed by the likes of tennis legend Martina Navratilova, NASA astronaut Commander Susan Kilrain and the Royal Navy’s Vice Admiral Sir Richard Ibbotson.
In a nutshell, FIT takes aim at this gap between what we know we should do and what feels compelling right now. By rehearsing mental images of success, the technique strengthens intrinsic motivation and brings future goals into the present.
Instead of vague intentions – ‘I should exercise more’ – FIT encourages you to imagine, in concrete sensory detail, what success would actually feel like: the bodily sensations, the emotions, and the sense of accomplishing something that truly matters to you.
In effect, you create a short ‘mental movie’ of your future self. And by repeatedly calling up this movie, everyday obstacles are reframed as steps towards something you genuinely value, rather than chores imposed from the outside.
“It’s motivational rocket fuel, if you like, when you start to think about how you’re using your imagery ability,” says Rhodes.
The bigger picture
At first glance, imagery training can sound like a woo-woo gimmick – the sort of thing a crystal-skull-loving aunt might recommend. But a growing body of research suggests otherwise. Studies led by psychologists such as Rhodes have tested FIT in settings where motivation really matters.
In the British Army, for example, FIT Training has been shown to improve recruit pass rates by around 10 per cent. It has also been used to help elite Arctic explorers prepare for high-stakes survival decisions in extreme environments. And in one striking ‘couch to ultra-marathon’ study, non-runners trained using FIT were five times more likely to complete a 40km (25.9 miles) event than those who received motivational interviewing – a commonly used counselling approach that helps people explore and strengthen their reasons for change.
But FIT isn’t limited to high-pressure settings. “It has been used to help people quit smoking, lose weight and improve performance under pressure,” says Rhodes. “It is very transferable throughout.”
Indeed, in one study of 114 participants, researchers tested FIT specifically as a weight-loss intervention, comparing it with motivational interviewing. Participants were randomly assigned to receive two brief sessions of one of the two approaches and were followed over six months.
The results were striking. On average, participants who practised FIT lost around five times more weight than those who received motivational interviewing. More surprisingly still, the effects didn’t fade once the programme ended. Even after the six-month intervention was over, people in the FIT group continued to lose weight. That caught researchers’ attention, because with most conventional weight-loss programmes the opposite tends to happen: within a year or two, many people regain half or more of the weight they’ve lost.
The real advantage of FIT? Control. Rather than relying on willpower or ongoing support, FIT taught participants how to generate motivation for themselves, using a small set of simple, repeatable techniques.
The four steps of fit
Although FIT grew out of established psychological approaches typically delivered by trained therapists, researchers including Rhodes have since distilled it into a practical, do-it-yourself format. While working with a trained professional is likely to produce the strongest results, the core techniques can also be practised independently by following four key steps.
Step 1: Pick your ‘why’
Step 2: Build your mental ‘mini-movie’
Step 3: Rehearse the wobble
Step 4: Choose a rehearsal cue.
Step 1. Pick your 'why'
As we’ve seen, FIT is built around strengthening intrinsic motivation. The first step, then, is choosing a goal that genuinely matters to you.
That might mean losing a certain amount of weight, eating healthier lunches, going to the gym in the mornings, spending less time on your phone and more time with your family, or simply getting out of the house more often. Whatever you choose, Rhodes advises, make sure it’s concrete and achievable – something you can realistically work towards, rather than a vague aspiration.
Critically, this tangible goal should be linked to a core personal value such as family, health, growth or adventure. To work out whether it’s truly meaningful, you can ask yourself questions like ‘Why is completing this goal important for me?’ and ‘How could this impact me in a year’s time?’
“A goal tied to your values motivates you and reminds you who you’re trying to become,” says Rhodes. “It becomes more than a task on a list.”
Professor Jackie Andrade – a pioneer of FIT at the University of Plymouth and a researcher involved in the weight-loss study above – agrees. “We work with people's desires and try to build them rather than sending a message that you need to experience short-term pain in order to achieve your long-term goal,” she says. “I think that people keep doing FIT because they like this new version of themselves.”
Step 2. Build your mental 'mini-movie'
Here’s the crucial element – and what really sets FIT apart. Rather than thinking about your goal in abstract terms, you deliberately engage your five senses – sight, sound, touch, smell and even taste – along with movement and emotion, to imagine yourself achieving it. The aim is to make the future feel as concrete and immediate as the present.
So, if your goal is to go to the gym more often, that imagery might include picturing the lighting and mirrors in the room, the music playing through your headphones, the feel of your feet hitting the floor, and even the satisfying ache in your muscles afterwards and sense of achievement.
See if you can link the feeling of achievement to a core value identified in step one, whether that’s being a healthier parent, feeling more confident in your body, or proving to yourself that you can stick to a plan.
If your goal is to be more social but anxiety keeps getting in the way, it can help to imagine a positive outcome to a situation you wanted to avoid.
In one FIT study, focused on anxiety, Andrade recalls a student who was too anxious to raise her hand in class. When she began vividly imagining herself doing it, she reported feeling a small but noticeable buzz. Over time, that anticipatory fear was replaced by a desire to take part and experience that positive feeling again.
In this way, Andrade says, “FIT helps you build up the confidence to engage, rather than avoid doing things. And it improves your mood so you’re in a better position to try something difficult.”
Whatever your goal, the principle is the same: picture yourself succeeding – or reaching a meaningful step along the way – using as many senses as you can. What can you see? What can you hear, smell or taste? What do you feel in your body?
Your mental movie doesn’t need to be elaborate, with a brief 30-second scene being enough. But the more detailed the scene, the more motivating it becomes. As a rule of thumb, drawing more than one of the senses plus a positive emotion is enough to make the image feel real. And if that sounds hard, don’t worry: even a single, well-chosen sensation can do the job (more on that below).
By rehearsing this short movie in advance, the abstract idea of ‘going to the gym’ or ‘being more social’ is replaced with a vivid, emotionally charged experience. When the moment of decision arrives, the brain has something concrete to latch on to – making action easier.
“You could say that what you’re doing is creating memories of the future that make the future much more concrete, feel much more achievable and feel closer in time because we’ve imagined it vividly,” explains Andrade.
Step 3. Rehearse the wobble
While building a vivid mental movie of success is a powerful motivator, lasting change also depends on rehearsing what happens when things don’t go smoothly. Or, as Rhodes puts it, learning how to act differently at ‘choice points’ – the split-second moments when you either move towards your goal or drift away from it.
This means developing a sequel, if you will – what Rhodes calls an ‘Obstacle movie’ – with the same sensory depth as your first success movie covered in step two.
If you know motivation tends to dip after a long day, for example, don’t simply remind yourself that you should go to the gym. Instead, mentally rehearse the follow-through: hear the snap of your trainers being tied, feel the weight of the door handle as you pull it open, notice the refreshing air outside. By engaging the senses, you prime yourself to act before indecision takes hold.
The same approach can be used to manage cravings. So, if you’re regularly tempted by the office vending machine, you can rehearse overcoming the urge rather than fighting it.
Picture yourself in the corridor where the machine sits, hear its low hum, and then vividly imagine turning away and walking on. Crucially, you also rehearse the feeling that follows – the satisfaction of sticking to your plan. Over time, those imagined responses become easier to reach for when the moment arrives.
Choose a rehearsal cue
Unfortunately, simply creating your success and obstacle movies isn’t enough. You have to replay them regularly. Repetition is what helps these mental movies retain an emotional punch, thus making them easier to call up when it matters.
FIT works best when imagery practice is anchored to everyday cues. That might mean replaying your mental movies at a set time each day, or tying them to a simple trigger in your routine, such as waiting for the kettle to boil or your coffee to brew. They can also be practised just before you expect motivation to be tested, such as before you reach the corridor with that vending machine.
You should practise consistently, but it doesn’t need to be for long: Rhodes says that going through two 30-second imagery routines per day is enough to boost your motivation.
By rehearsing these scenes in advance – during your morning routine, or in the moments leading up to temptation – you move away from relying on fragile willpower and towards using a robust, pre-programmed mental script when it counts.
No perfect fit
The biggest worry people have when they try their first mental movie or rehearsal is simple: what if I can’t picture it properly?
The answer, according to FIT experts: don’t worry. You can still make a mental movie – even if you initially struggle to imagine situations using certain senses. In fact, research suggests FIT can be effective for people with very low imagery ability, including those with aphantasia (people who cannot generate any mental imagery).
Rather than insisting that everyone visualise in the same way, you can adapt your movie to your imagination. So instead of trying to force a full five-sense scene, you’re encouraged to begin with the senses that feel most available to you.
For many people, that starting point isn’t visual at all. It might be emotion, bodily sensation or sound. “Even when visual imagery is weak or absent, most people can still access the feeling behind a goal,” says Jonathan Rhodes – and that emotional imagery can be a powerful place to begin.
Importantly, struggling at the start doesn’t mean you’ll always struggle. In a recent study, Rhodes and his colleagues identified 27 athletes with unusually low imagery ability across one or more senses. Instead of asking them to imagine rich scenes straight away, the training focused on stabilising a single sense – whichever was strongest for that person. Even athletes who initially struggled to imagine showed clear improvements, with gains maintained six months after formal training ended.
If you find it hard to picture a situation, you might begin by tuning into the sound of what’s happening – the bounce of a ball, in the athlete study – or physical sensations. Over time, that single anchor can start to pull in other senses, making the scene feel fuller and easier to access.
What matters, then, isn’t the vividness of your imagination, but that you have a workable starting point. Start with what you can imagine and let the results follow.
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