You may be surprised at how flexible and programmable your own preferences are.

You can, for example, learn to love exercise.

Even if you don’t like it now.

Even if you hate it.

There are all kinds of behavioral tricks you can try. Things like rewarding yourself after a workout, doing something to psych yourself up, or having a responsible partner.

All of those, and more, are useful.

You know best how you operate. Maybe penalizing yourself with a donation to a cause you hate will work for you. Might make you dig in your heels.

I’ll leave it up to you to figure all that out.

But if all that seems more complicated than it’s worth…

And you really want to learn to like it, not keep tricking yourself into doing it…

…that’s where these approaches come in.

You can modify your own preferences so you don’t have to criticize yourself. You really enjoy it.

I know, because I love working out now. After decades of struggling, and trying very hard, to stick to a routine, I now crave it.

Once a week used to be a burden. Now, I like to work out three times a day if I have the time.

And you can do the same for yourself, with a little hypnotic work. Here are three general strategies: the details, which will be personal to you, are for you to fill in.

The first approach is to identify the cause of the resistance and change it.

Do you hate exercising because of the pain? Rework your mind so that you get a runner’s high instead.

Does it make you feel out of shape, uncoordinated and uninspired? Train your brain to take pride in your progress, not your performance.

The second approach is to reconfigure your associations.

If the thought of working out makes your stomach feel heavy, turn it inside out so it fills your body with light.

Instead of feeling tired before you start, find out how you can feel uplifted.

The third approach?

Set your intention, go into a very deep trance, and let your unconscious figure it out.

You may not even know what the problem was.

Or how you fixed it.

Only suddenly it’s a lot easier to put on your workout gear and hit the gym.

That’s the weirdest way to do it. And, in a way, it is the most difficult, because it requires immense trust in your own unconscious.

And a deep relationship there.

That doesn’t come naturally, it takes work.

Once you get there, though?

It can be as simple as thinking what (or who) you want to be…

So you wake up like this.