It seems like a new year and fitness goals have been going hand in hand forever. It’s only natural since a new year offers a fresh start, a blank slate or whatever you want to call it. A new year means it’s time to leave all the slacking and laziness behind and straighten up!
But it’s unlikely that slacking or laziness have caused past failures. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits (highly recommended), states that we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. Person A and person B might both have the same goal of losing 10 pounds. When person A achieves and person B does not, it’s obviously not because of the goal. Success depended on the actions that person A and person B took, making the goal insignificant compared to the action.
Outcome based goals like losing weight or saving money are not inherently bad. They can be great measures of whether we are using an effective process or forming the right habits. If that is what you’re using goals for then great! Keep doing it but don’t give goals much more importance beyond that.
The problem with goals
The biggest problem with goals is they put all the emphasis on their achievement. You can finally celebrate when you’ve lost that 10th pound or saved that 1,000th dollar. Unfortunately, we don’t celebrate losing the 3rd pound or saving the 74th dollar, even though they were just as important to achieving the end goal.
We all have the ability to make positive change and feel successful on a daily basis. Each day should be looked at as an opportunity to get better and more importantly feel great about what we’re doing. Losing the goal-based mindset allows us to do this. Feel good all the time, not just at the moment of success. You will enjoy the process and stick with it a lot better when you’re continually achieving success!
Secondly, goals either undershoot or overshoot potential. It is impossible to set a 100% appropriate goal for yourself. To run a sub 7 minute mile is great but what if you’re capable of running a sub 6 minute mile? On the flip side, if your full potential is somewhere between 5 and 6 minutes then setting a sub 5 minute goal would never be achieved. A focus on continual improvement will get you closer and closer to your full potential over time. Plus, every minor victory is reason to feel good.
What to do instead
If I asked you to define your 3 most important life goals, I doubt that losing 10 pounds would be one of them. You might have a goal that sounds something more like: I want to become healthier. The key word in the previous sentence is become. Becoming something is much more powerful and worth while than achieving some arbitrary outcome.
I’ve played on a ton of sports teams in my life. Some were very successful and others are still painful to reflect on. I like to remember the teams that won every game instead of lost every game (yes, I’ve been on both). Naturally I often ponder the question: what makes some teams winners and other teams losers?
When you’re on a winning team it almost feels like you can’t lose. No matter what the situation is you feel like when the clock reads zero you will be on top. When I’ve been on losing teams it has felt like the exact opposite. It always feels like you’re going to find some way to screw it up. What those teams believed about themselves was incredibly important. Some teams identified as winners and other teams identified as losers.
Now I bet you’re saying “yeah, but I bet some of those teams were a lot more talented, had better coaching, etc.” and I will agree with you. But if you follow sports long enough you will see case after case of underachieving teams. Teams that have all the resources and talent on paper but just can’t put it together. I would argue that these teams need to change what they believe about themselves before they ever have a chance at success. Champions identify and act like champions long before they win actual championships.
We can all be something better
I would argue that the first step to achieving better outcomes is to change what you believe about yourself. This is actually really easy in theory because there’s nothing to do other than change your mindset. But in practice it can be extremely difficult. This is because we’re going up against a set of ideas that we’ve likely been repeating to ourselves for a long time.
New thoughts about ourselves require a clear vision of a new identity. The new identity should be an improved version of yourself, not an attempt to be like someone else. The best visions incorporate something that’s already inside you but just hasn’t manifested into something real yet.
The key to making this new identity last is to give it validation in the form of physical actions. You can believe you’re healthy all day long but if you’re 100 pounds over weight and devouring McDonalds as you’re reading this, eventually you’re going to question this “healthy” you.
The good news is that we can validate our new identity through simple daily actions. We do not need to take massive action to accomplish this. For instance, if your new identity is a health conscious person who prioritizes their fitness, then taking the stairs instead of the elevator is a simple way to validate the healthy new you. Other great ways of validating a healthy you is by logging your food or going for a 20 minute walk after work.
Small actions will give you proof of who you are becoming. Who you are becoming will propel you to take even more positive actions. This cycle will not only build momentum but it will start to firmly cement your new identity over time. We all have the desire to be consistent with our beliefs and we can leverage this to make meaningful changes in our lives. You will eventually start making healthy choices because that’s just the type of person you are.
If you enjoyed this article please subscribe to our free fitness & weight loss newsletter.