Do Your Goals Matter?
Happy new year! January is connected to fitness in many people’s minds. New gym memberships, new resolutions, and new goals. Goal-setting is great, so why do most people fail so quickly when it comes to resolutions?
I often joke with clients that there are two ways to hit your goal. You can change your behavior until you get there (because if your current behavior was enough, you’d be there already) or decide that your goal wasn’t important to you in the first place. Playing the piano, or speaking a new language sounds cool, but you can’t accomplish the goal if you don’t work towards it, and work is, well you know…hard. So how do I know if my goal is something I am really willing to work towards or if it just “would be cool”?
A new Why emerges: a knockdown jumper
To tap into your deepest motivations, I’ve been experimenting a lot with myself, our trainers, and clients with the 5 Why’s. Basically you ask yourself what your goal is, and then you ask yourself why that is important to you, five times.
For example:
What is your goal? To lose weight
Why do you want to lose weight?
Because I don’t like the way my fat folds over my jeans
Why don’t you like the way your fat folds over your jeans?
Because it makes me feel gross and unattractive
Why do you feel gross and unattractive?
Because I’m not in as good as shape as I used to be
Why aren’t you in as good as shape as you used to be?
I don’t make the time to take care of myself, and it makes me feel like I am letting myself down and I don’t want to live with that feeling anymore
Why don’t you want to live with that feeling anymore?
Because I want to be a good example for my kids so I can be there for them
(This is just a made up example, but you can see that this is an uncomfortable level of inquiry for many people. If you shed some tears, you’re doing great, I’ve been there)
This is a simple, but not easy, way to delve pretty deeply into your true motivations. “Motivation” as a concept is what happens when you read an inspiring Facebook post. It leads to a hot flash of inspiration that lasts may be a minute or two. This is different than discipline, which is doing it when you don’t want to, and being willing to work harder for it than others. When you can align your goals and your behavior, it requires tapping deeply into your true motivations. The five why’s is a great way to do it because now your goals are aligned with what gives you purpose and meaning. And now decreasing body fat, adding muscle, or making your lifts go up is just an extension of how you want to live this glorious life that you’ve been given.
So if you’re tired of stopping and starting, if you’re tired of doing something for two weeks and you quit in week three (which is when it gets hard) maybe a realignment is necessary. Is it worth working towards? And if it’s not, which is also OK, then at least you can give up on beating yourself up about not being able to play the piano or speak another language.
Fitness is hard, because it reflects so much of who we want to be and how we see ourselves. We all have to decide what we are willing to do and what we are not and hopefully that comes from our deepest and truest heart. Then it makes working towards a bigger bench press the easy part. Happy new year, and happy goalsetting, I wish you strength and success.
My deepest Why