The Journey Part 1: Go on a journey with me!
Go on a journey with me.
In fact, I want you to go on two journeys with me. The first, is tagging along and following my progress as I push to get into the best shape of my life. The second, is further defining your own goals for your personal fitness journey.
“According to the research of psychologists, neurologists, and other scientists, setting goals pushes us to invest in the target as if we’d already accomplished it.” [1]
Read that again if you missed it. The mere act of setting goals starts our brains towards investing in actually reaching the goal. The lesson; do not wander aimlessly.
I have talked in previous posts about the importance of setting SMART goals for yourself. SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) have been shown in research to be extremely effective. But this is the first I have read about them being effective merely from the act of SETTING the goals!
What kind of goals should you set?
Specific and challenging.
The vast majority of studies (90%) show that if the goals are vague or too easy then it does not have the same impact. For goals to help affect our performance, improve our attention, generate effort, motivate us to be strategic and help increase our persistence; then the goal must be challenging and something that generates a strong emotional connection.
How does this work?
The brain has a property called, neuroplasticity, or its ability to physically adapt to and optimize itself to achieve a goal. This was first identified in a study of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Amazingly, despite the debilitating nature of MS which attacks the brain and causes numerous physical symptoms, researchers found that:
“MS patients who set ambitious wellness goals had fewer, less severe symptoms than a control group. In effect, goal-setting actually helped heal their brains.” [2]
Goal-setting can change the brain of someone with a degenerative brain disease. Imagine what it can do for you?
Another quote from the same article:
"Goal-setting literally alters the structure of your brain so that you perceive and behave in ways that will cause you to achieve those goals.
Challenging goals that have strong emotional resonance will alter your brain structure more quickly and effectively than weak goals."[2]
Hopefully, at this point you are motivated to set some specific and challenging goals for yourself!
Finding balance
“When we obsess over our goals, we can easily sacrifice what makes those goals meaningful in the first place.” [3]
“What are you saying Tim? You get me all hyped up to set goals, then you tell me not to obsess over the goals.”
Read that last sentence again, the issue is when we sacrifice what makes those goals meaningful in the first place.
I’ll give a hypothetical to illustrate.
Let’s say you have an overarching goal to spend more quality time with your grandchildren. In relation to that goal, you chose the very specific and challenging goal of dropping 50 pounds of excess body weight. Your rationale was that your grandchildren are young and they love to play energetically. With the excess body weight, you simply could not keep up with them. Now in your quest to achieve this goal, you are working out so often that you never spend time with your grandchildren. You started working towards your goal to spend more quality time with your grandkids, but working towards that goal took you away from your grandkids. That’s what the above quote is referring to; you sacrificed what was meaningful. You have lost sight of the bigger picture.
And what is the bigger picture?
In my previous vlogs I would refer to the bigger picture as what drives you. Don’t get so caught up in your quest for your goal that you lose focus on your values. Always make sure the specific and challenging goal you choose is in alignment with your value system, with what drives you.
Furthermore, achieving balance also means breaking down your ambitious goal into smaller bite sized chunks. The larger goal provides us greater motivation, but the smaller goals along the way provide us with additional feedback. Either we achieve them as expected and experience the emotional reward from that achievement. Or possibly, we do not achieve them, and it serves to help us adapt and redefine future steps toward our larger goal.
There is good data to suggest that being flexible with your goal is better than being too rigid. This doesn’t mean you should give up easily or aim too low. Rather, it suggests being engaged in the process and recognizing when a specific goal is not serving your interests or even when it is causing more stress in your life. It is being willing to move the targets for both the smaller and larger goals to better align with who you are and what you value.
I want to share an image which outlines a process whereby you start with what you value and work in subsequent steps all the way down to small easy to achieve goals.
For me, I value Christlike character, and not to be unoriginal, but like the image above, I also value relationships and financial freedom.
General goals for me include inspiring my clients and serving my clients to the best of my ability. Inspiring my clients and serving their needs is completely in line with attempting to be more Christlike. Further, if my clients are satisfied with my service, it also contributes to my relationships and financial freedom.
My ambitious, external, specific goal that will help me inspire my clients? Some of you know bits and pieces as I have talked about it during our sessions.
Check back soon on Facebook or TikTok, I will be outlining the details of my goal to get into the best shape of my life in a future video series.
As I pursue my ambitious goal through smaller intermediate goals, I will be learning more about what the human body is capable of. I see myself as a test subject and I love applying what I learn through my own experiences to make myself a better personal trainer. Thus, it completes a beautiful cycle whereby even working toward smaller goals can feed back into a loop reinforcing what I value in life.
Finally, at the bottom of the chart above, it states to "Write that stuff down". Well, it doesn't say stuff, but you get the drift. Write it down, tell someone, make it real.
Set. Challenging. Goals.
I've done it and I encourage you to do the same and be amazed at what you can accomplish!
(Part 2)
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