In the traditional sense a goal is a finite achievement, an end result. Once you achieve a goal you have to either make a new one, or find something new to hold your attention. This is why diets don’t work in the long term and why New Year’s resolutions burnout by the end of January. A new perspective on achievement is required to bridge this gap. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with having goals, how you formulate them can make all the difference in the world.
When something is important to you, you will walk through fire for it. If you’ve had trouble sticking with goals in the past it may be that the goals you are setting don’t resonate with you. In other words they aren’t actually important to you in their stated terms, or at all in some cases. Sometimes we let others opinions create an image of who we should be that is unrealistic, this can lead to goals that we think we should have, rather than really caring about them. Other times we know consciously that something like eating vegetables is good for us, but choose to ignore that fact when push comes to shove, because we prioritize total calories in order to be strong for our sport. In this case our priorities are overriding our conscious awareness about the reality of a situation.
The first step to creating alignment is discovering who you are and what is actually important to you. This is not a fast process, but it can help to write down your daily activities and grade them on how satisfying they are for you as a starting point. Getting a basic idea of what type of activities really bring you to life can create awareness as you go through each day and begin the process of aligning your actions with who you are deep down.
As this process develops you may find that you are already doing what you love. For me I went back and forth worrying if I should be a firefighter, or what I should be doing with my life instead of just working out all the time. It turned out the reason I was working out all the time is because I loved it and it made me really happy. So I invested in my coaching education and went full force into a career in fitness and health. I’ll never look back.
In other cases people may find that they need a big change in their life. Careers, relationships, and lifestyle fall into this category. This can be extremely scary, which is probably another reason why people set insignificant goals rather than truly attempt to discover something about themselves. If you really want to affect change in your life, you can not be afraid to look inwards.
The great thing about life is that even when we make big changes we have opportunities to move forward and build upon our progress. Unless you come to the realization that you need to tell your boss to go fuck himself, you can generally implement some significant changes in your life and over time decide if you are on the right track.
Once you are on the right track you can more easily make decisions that support yourself. Not that everything becomes black and white, but there is a purpose behind your actions. If you are supporting the overall purpose of your life, that is a good decision and plan of action, if what you are doing goes against this, you should stop.
Here’s a couple of examples to round things out. If you’re a single mom with “no time” to workout, because you have to juggle work, errands and home life you might discover that taking time for yourself to exercise allows you to feel invigorated and be more engaged with your children when you spend time with them.
If you’re a big strong athlete with no space in your diet for spinach, you might discover that eating vegetables helps with your digestion and allows you to get more value out of the meals you eat. You might also discover that as you age and your body becomes less resilient, “healthy” foods will allow you to continue to participate at a competitive level for years to come.
You may also discover that you don’t need to kill yourself with your exercise program to feel valued. Maybe initially your group functional fitness program was a great way for you meet people and share an intense experience, but then you discover that all of these wonderful people who you have grown to care about will still value your friendship whether your Fran time is 2 minutes or 10. You can simply exercise to feel good, and have enough capacity to go for a few hikes and look good naked. And you don’t need to limp out of bed in the morning everyday to feel like you’re important.
