It’s that time of year again when everyone makes their new year’s resolutions or goals, and unfortunately most people never even get close to accomplishing what they set out to do. We don’t want that for any of you, so today we thought it would be a timely topic to discuss goal setting vs goal getting. What sets those who achieve their goals, and those who don’t, apart?
Follow the hosts:
- Dr. Kristin Lander: @drkristinlander
- Mary Morton, PhD: @marymortonphd
Sign up for the Female Strength Academy Membership & join LIVE us for our weekly seminars/podcast recordings: https://thestrengthacademypodcast.com/product-category/membership/
Check out our nutrition coaching:
- Fiercely Fueled Nutrition Coaching – Online nutrition coaching for strength and functional fitness athletes. Coached by our own Dr. Kristin Lander, DC, CISSN.
- Intuitive Athlete Nutrition Coaching – Online intuitive eating nutrition coaching for female strength athletes. Coached by Dr. Mary Morton, PhD, CISSN.
Follow us on Instagram and tag us in your posts by using the hashtag #empoweredbyiron
Join our women’s only Facebook Group: https://m.facebook.com/groups/femalestrengthacademy
Mary:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Female Strength Academy podcast! Happy 2021! We made it, guys. We have made it through 2020. We are in 2021. Can you feel the magic?
Kristin:
I feel no magic.
Mary:
Which is what this whole episode is about.
Kristin:
It feels no different.
Mary:
No different. We felt like, hey, let’s talk about goal setting and goal getting for the first episode in January because we know that you guys are setting goals. It’s the time of the year to set goals. And then a lot of us don’t ever accomplish them, and we want better for you guys. We want you guys to set goals and then go get those goals.
Kristin:
And set them any time of year you want. It doesn’t have to be on January 1st.
Mary:
Right. But if you did set goals for the new year, for 2021, that’s okay. Listen. Maybe this is just the reset you needed. Maybe 2020 was just that much of a shit show that we really just needed 2021 to reset and take back control of some things. And we want you to be successful in those things. We don’t want you to fail. We never want anyone to fail their goals, ever. I want you to be successful in the things that you want. Kristen wants the same thing. We want that for our clients. We want that for our listeners, we want that for our followers…
Kristin:
And for ourselves.
Mary:
And for ourselves. But we have to also be pretty realistic with the fact that like a lot of the goals people set, they don’t go get, so how do we bridge that gap between getting and then just goal setting? What’s the magic sauce, you know?
I think Kristen and I have set goals for ourselves or things we want to work on. Not necessarily at the new year – I set these goals back in November and I’ve been slowly working towards them. And Kristen has something she’s been focusing on.
Kristin:
Yeah. I always have goals. I always have things I’m focusing on. That’s why I’m a negative Nancy about New Year’s resolutions. Cause I’m like…
Mary:
Usually that’s my brand.
Kristin:
I know, like shouldn’t you always be studying and going for goals? But 2020 really ended on a bang for me. It was everything that happened during the year just seemed to get worse the last two weeks of the year. So, I did actually say, “All right, I’m going back to work on January 4th. A couple of things are gonna to change,” and that’s as close as I get to a new year’s resolution.
Mary:
The timing was just suspicious.
Kristin:
It was, it was. Yep. I’m just going to be a little bit more regimented with my schedule. And really have a lot of boundaries around my time and my energy.
Mary:
I saw a video up on TikTok because I’m obsessed. It’s a problem now, but it was this psychology major talking about goal setting. And what she said is when you write goals, write them as though they’re the present tense, as though you are already living them. So if you want something, don’t say, “My goal is to get blah, blah, blah.” You say it as though you have a present tense.
Let’s say, for example, I want to buy a certain home when I’m older. Instead of saying, “My goal is to get a mountain home,” if we flip the conversation, it’s, “I am so grateful to be living in my dream mountain home.” And you see that every day and that tricks your brain enough to get you moving a little bit more. When you see that goal every day and act as though you’re already living it and working as though you’re already living in, it’s this little tiny trick that isn’t going to solve your problems. There is no magic to goal setting, but it’s something that when you see those goals every day – cause you should put your goals, whatever they are, no matter how big they are – in a place that you can see them every single day, you read that every single day and it sparks a little in you to get going and get moving.
Kristin:
100%. I do this with lifting my lifting goals. I write them as though I’ve already achieved them. Like they’ve already happened. Once you finally hit that PR that you were going for, it makes it not as exciting. I will tell you that. I was like, my goal for a long time was to bench over 200, the day I bench 205 I was like, “Yeah, I’ve already done this a hundred times in my head. I already have written down that I can do it and that I have done it.” So it was a little less exciting, but also that’s how we achieve things. Sometimes it’s not always exciting.
Mary:
We are so happy you guys are here. We hope that you have a wonderful 2021 and let’s get it started.
Mary:
Today we are going to be talking about goal setting versus goal getting, and this is timely as many people are probably setting New Year’s resolutions or have set New Year’s goals. Kristin does not like the word resolutions. I’m not a big fan either.
Kristin:
I’m just crabby about all goal setting and resolution.
Kristin:
She’s just, she’s got things to say. So when I brought this up to her, she rejected it immediately. Can you tell me why?
Kristin:
The topic? Yeah. You said, “Hey, what if we talk about goal setting for this topic?” And I was like, hmmm. And then said nothing for a couple hours because I was at work and finally came back and was like, “I just don’t like this topic. In general, I hate the topic of goal setting. And it’s not like if you guys have listened to the podcast at all, or you know me at all, I’m very goal-oriented and driven. So it’s not that I lack the drive to go after what I want. The problem that I see is people set goals all of the time, and there’s no follow-through and it’s irritating. Don’t even tell me your goal until you started working on it and know that you’re going to get there.
And I don’t mean to sound crabby about it, but it’s one of those things where I think that in our society, it is very talked-about to set goals and go after goals and have big goals. And “if your goals don’t scare you, they’re not big enough” and all this stuff. And there’s such little talk about the in-between the goal setting and accomplishing their goal. All of the things that happen during and people give up on their goals so much. I get that there are a million different reasons why that might happen. But that’s why I get irritated because I don’t see a whole lot of goal-getting implemented. And I see a whole lot of goal setting. It’s so easy to talk about these big things that we want to go after, and say, “I want this and I want that.”
And it’s like, okay, now what are you going to do to get there? And so we all know about setting SMART goals, right? Everyone’s heard that acronym. We know that there has to be a timeline and it has to be measurable and all of this stuff. Okay, so you can do that, but then what? You write it down, but then are you implementing any of the things that you need to implement to get there?
And what happens two weeks down the road, eight weeks down the road? Where are you with that? And so that’s why I hate resolutions because I feel like they’re empty promises. And I think that oftentimes goal setting is empty promises to yourself, and you deserve better than that. You deserve to actually put in the work. And I think that people fail to realize that the work is the best form of self-love that there is. And I think that people don’t value themselves or their worth enough to actually do the work when it’s really hard.
Mary:
I agree. And I also think that people tend to set goals….we’ve talked about this many times on here – are your goals, actually your goals? We set goals that we think will impress other people. And so we talk prematurely about them before we’ve even made steps towards them before we’ve even done anything in order to start reaching that goal.
I know that when people tell me goals, and I don’t mean to sound negative at all, but it’s just a pattern that Kristen and I have recognized. It’s like, if someone tells me their goals and they aren’t already part way there. And I mean, partially could be 1/10, it could be a fraction, right?
Kristin:
They’re not already actively doing something that’s on the path of that goal.
Mary:
I know that they’re going to fail. They’re not going to accomplish that goal. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a failure. Right? It could just be that, that goal. It wasn’t what you wanted. It wasn’t exactly what you thought you needed. And there’s nothing wrong with that, like we talked about before. There’s nothing wrong with taking a step back and adjusting to things that better suit your likes, interests, personalities, lifestyle, whatever. I forget who said it, but there was a quote that I heard a while back, and I’m also going to butcher the quote because I can’t remember exactly what the quote says.
Kristin:
That’s okay. Just your variation, go ahead.
Mary:
So, what I heard is basically “the people who are accomplishing their goals or working towards their goals, you don’t hear from, they’re usually doing the work in silence, working towards it. But the people who are not accomplishing goals, who are not working towards their goals in an effective, efficient way are the ones that scream it from the rooftop.”
It’s just like what we see on Instagram. The people who are not and should not be giving nutritional advice tend to say it the loudest, and the people who know what they’re talking about, who have a pretty good handle on their specific niche, interest, topic, whatever it is, tend to be a lot quieter or very careful about what they say because they know that they don’t know all the things. But they are an expert in this particular region, right?
Like, if someone, for example, came to us asking about endurance nutrition, we probably have a general idea of what is going on, what they should be doing, but that’s not our expertise. And so we’re not going to be the ones to be like, “this is exactly what you need to do.” I know for a fact we’re not fully up-to-date on all the research. We don’t know everything. So we’re more likely to push people in another direction where someone who maybe says things loudly, but doesn’t know what they’re talking about. We’ll give them some plans so they don’t think that they’re an idiot. So they don’t think that they don’t know.
Kristin:
Yeah. I mean, you’re describing exactly why I went the route I went with sports nutrition because I used to work with all athletes. I worked with endurance athletes. I worked with strength athletes. I worked with CrossFit athletes, which I still do work with CrossFit athletes, but I’m really heavy on the strength side of things. And the reason that I did that was because I realized that number one, my interest obviously is a strength athlete. And so I know it really well because I know how these things affect my body. I understand it. I understand what my athletes are going through. And the endurance side of things – I know it, I can do it. I can help people, but I can help people better when I focus all my efforts into reading the research for strength athletes and all of that stuff.
Now, when I have people come to me that are endurance athletes and want to work with me, I generally end up not working with them. Not because I don’t think that I can help them, and not because I don’t want to help them. But because I know that there’s someone just like me that’s on the endurance side of things that can do a way better job of that than I can. And I think that that’s really important to be able to recognize that you don’t have to know everything.
Mary:
You don’t have to know everything, but also be humble enough to admit when you don’t. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching someone talk about something that you know they know nothing about instead of just admitting like, “Hey, I don’t, I don’t have the answer for you.” Now, will I go on the back end and do hours of research to find the answer for you? Absolutely, I will. But at that moment in time, I will happily admit I don’t know these things. It’s totally okay to say you don’t know. It’s perfectly fine. No one should think less of anyone because they say they don’t know something. In fact, they should think that they’re better because they are able to admit that they don’t know this particular thing.
Kristin:
I always say the more that I know, and the more that I study, the more that I learn, the more that I research, the less I know because the human body is a very complex system, and people respond to things differently.
So getting back to what I was saying previously, I want to just jump in with this. So what’s the missing piece? Are people missing coaching, accountability? Some people kick on seemingly impossible goals without all of that. Why? What’s the difference? And I will say from my experience of a decade of working with athletes and being an athlete, I think that the people that are the most successful are very disciplined. They are extremely disciplined. I think that that’s a lot of it. I say this all the time that motivation is fleeting, right? Motivation maybe gets you started, but it doesn’t carry you through. So you have to be really, really, really disciplined. And that’s the thing that I think people fall off on being disciplined.
And I used to be this way. I would sabotage myself by not being disciplined enough because I had issues with my self-worth. To be honest, I didn’t really feel like I was going to be able to accomplish that goal. So I would not be disciplined enough to actually get to the goal and then blame it on like, “Oh, well this came up in life and this came up in life.” Well, if you’re really disciplined, you’re going to find a way, barring things like a pandemic may be that keeps you out of the gym or, you know what I’m saying? Like major, major, major issues. But if it’s just like, “I got really busy at work and then I couldn’t really eat the food that I needed to eat or make it to the gym.” Like, hmmm. I don’t know.
But I also think, accountability is a big piece that’s missing for many people because they don’t have anyone to hold them accountable or don’t have anyone to like, gas them up. Right? So that’s one thing that I just experienced the other day as I was training and talking to a friend of mine over Instagram, who I used to train with and was really gassing me up. Like during my training session, I was like, I’ve been missing this. This was awesome. And so I think that that’s where a coach can come in. It’s kind of all of that stuff – coaching, accountability, and discipline, but discipline is the part that I see missing a lot.
Mary:
And we also have to think that it’s not motivation. As Kristen said, motivation will die. A hundred percent of the time, motivation will disappear, and you will be left with trying to figure things out. So Stacy Burr said this in a podcast forever ago, but it is momentum over motivation, doing things every day, which ties into the discipline thing perfectly. It’s doing things every day to work you closer towards your goal. And I think many people may get overwhelmed in thinking that they need to put their entire effort into accomplishing that goal. But you don’t, as long as you’re taking a baby step forward every day, it’s still a baby step forward. It’s still a step in the right direction. And that is what keeps people going. It’s that momentum. It’s doing a small thing. And then another thing and another thing, and you look back on a month of doing small things, and it’s now one big thing that has brought you to this space. And then you keep going and you keep going and you keep going. But also to build off what Kristen said, it’s the self-love. It’s loving yourself enough to know that you can do this, that it’s going to happen. You just have to be patient with yourself, and you have to keep putting in the work every single day.
Kristin:
One of the big things for me back when I recognized my self-sabotage, and when I recognized the reasons for it was continuing to do the work, even when I had a bad day. So one thing that would happen was I would have something happen in my day or, for whatever reason, I was just down on myself that day. We all have those days, right? Where we’re just really hard on ourselves.
Mary:
Don’t make decisions on those days, for the love of God.
Kristin:
I do not make decisions on those days and continue on. If you’re supposed to train that day, train. If you’re supposed to hit your macros that day or whatever your nutrition is, do it that day. Even if you feel like you’re not deserving of it, do it because tomorrow you’re going to feel different. And then you’re going to be pissed off at yourself that you didn’t do it.
Mary:
Do it anyway.
Kristin:
Do it anyway. And I think that was a huge change in my life. Once I started doing that was when I really started making traction towards these goals. Because the thing that happens is if we set these goals and then we kind of do the work, but not really do the work to get to them, all that we’re doing is telling ourselves that we can accomplish the goal. That’s the underlying operating philosophy in your brain is that you can’t really accomplish it. And so you kind of, don’t really try.
Mary:
Mhmm. You’ve trained your brain over and over and over to think that you’re just a failure because every time, you jumped ship.
But I really want, before you continue on, I really want to hone in that point if you have a low day, if you have a bad day where you just don’t feel like yourself and you feel like nothing’s working, nothing’s happening, all the above…truly those are the days you need to just stop. Don’t make the decision and do what Kristen said and just go with your original plan, whatever your original plan was. Stick it out. If tomorrow or the next day, you’re feeling better, but you still have these feelings of you want to change things, you want to do something different, this isn’t exactly what you want, start journaling through it, start working it out, start figuring out what it is you actually want. But don’t let especially a bad day and a late night mess up your goals, because we’re all going to have those, myself included. Especially if you stay up really late one night and you’ve had a really stressful day, late at night, you may sit on your phone or you may be sitting there just freaking out like, “I’m never going to get there. Why am I even trying? I need to completely change directions,” and mess up your progress. Think about that.
Kristin:
Think about it: You have a bad day at work, which we’ve all had – you don’t quit your job, do you? I mean, maybe you do, maybe it’s on that level of bad, right? But for the most part, we all have these not great days at work for whatever reason. Whether it was your attitude going into work, whether it was something that happened beyond your control at work, whether you weren’t prepared enough, whatever. Someone on you at work, who knows what it was. But we all have those bad days. We usually don’t quit our job over it. Why? Because our jobs put a roof over our head and food on our table. And you need to approach your goals the same way. Deep going, because tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow will be different. And maybe tomorrow won’t, but next week will. And if you quit now, you miss out on all the good stuff.
You mentioned momentum, Mary, and that was something that I think everyone can relate to. Say you’ve kind of been off the rails with your eating for a while and not really focused on your training for a while. We’ve all had that happen. And then you start to actually move the needle back towards doing that stuff again. And you’re kind of dialing in your nutrition a little bit, and then your training’s going a little bit better because you’re dialing in your nutrition and focusing on sleep – that momentum. Think about that. We’ve all experienced that that carries you through. It’s like, “Oh yes. Today was an awesome training day cause I’m dialing in all this other stuff.” And now you’re building momentum again. So use that. You don’t have to do everything perfectly. Just like we talked about recently: consistency over perfection, right? It doesn’t have to be perfect, but build some momentum, build some behaviors that will carry you through and be disciplined enough and love yourself enough to get through the difficult parts.
Mary:
Yep. And think about it. Just like what we said before, if these are not your goals, if you’re making goals because you want to impress people or because your friends are making those goals or whatever the situation is, if it’s not what you want…first of all, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice because you’re gonna fail. You literally don’t want it. And then that failure, not accomplishing that goal you didn’t want to begin with, is still going to train your brain to think that when you set a goal, you’re not going to accomplish it, so why try?
Starting that pattern and the more you build on that same pattern, this is why it’s so hard for women to come out – sorry, people in general, to come out of disordered eating or an eating disorder. Because they’ve built that behavior so much. And they’ve built up that fear of either gaining weight or they’re afraid of food, or they’re afraid of a type of food over and over and over again. The neural pathways are just like, that is bad news. We’re going to avoid it. And this is why a lot of people revert back to disordered behavior. When things get really stressful, because it’s something that they know, it’s their default. Now they’ve done it over and over and over again.
It’s the default pushing through and trying to eat on the days you don’t want to and working out and training on the days you don’t want to. Those are new novel pathways you have to reinforce so that those are habits. Because right now, if everything falls apart, you revert back to the disordered eating habits you had before. The lack of training you had before, the mindset you had before.
So you really have to evaluate if your goals are your goals, because when things get stressful, if the goal is not really what you want, you’re going to revert back to old behaviors anyway. There’s no motivation to keep you going. There’s no momentum because you don’t care if you get there or not.
Kristin:
So, make no mistake, reaching your goals is difficult, right?
Mary:
Oh, for sure.
Kristin:
If it wasn’t difficult, we wouldn’t need all of this talking about goal setting and goal getting. It’s hard. You’re going to encounter obstacles along the way. And so you need to one, be prepared for that, know that that’s going to happen. And also, be prepared to push through that. Now, we’ve talked about it many times. Sometimes you get through that obstacle and you go, “I wasn’t prepared for this level of difficulty and I don’t want this thing bad enough.” But I would argue that possibly, if you had some experience with this thing that you’re going for, this a goal that you’re setting, if you’re already sort of on that pathway towards getting it, that’s probably not going to end up happening. It’s the people that, for instance, have never lifted a weight ever and they say, “I want to squat 400 pounds.” Okay. That’s an awesome goal. You haven’t even started lifting yet. So let’s get you started lifting and like, let’s find out if you even like it before we set SMART goals to get you to squat 400. So, there’s a difference if you already can squat 300 and you say, “I want to squat 400.” Okay, now I know you’ve got the discipline and the behaviors in line to be able to push yourself to that level. So I think that’s a lot of it too, is that people set really high lofty goals in the beginning and don’t have any idea what they’re getting themselves into, and that can be problematic. I think that’s also why I don’t like the topic of goal setting, because I think it’s encouraged to do that. And I would argue that let’s spend some time thinking about this thing and researching this and trying it out before we just jump in and set all of these parameters around how we’re going to reach this goal on this thing that we have no experience with.
Mary:
Yeah. You have no idea what it takes to get to that point. Start doing the work and see where you’re at.
Kristin:
For sure. I’ve talked about in the past. I thought I wanted to do triathlons because that’s what everyone around me was doing. I was a massage therapist at the time and worked on a lot of Ironman and Ironwomen competitors. And I was so inspired by them, and I asked a friend of mine who did triathlons, “If I trained for a year, do you think I could do this?” And he was like, no. And I was really offended. And I said, why? And he was like, “You don’t even run. You don’t swim. You don’t do any of these things.”
Mary:
You don’t like it. What are you doing?!
Kristin:
I realized I was just really inspired by their level of dedication. It wasn’t that I wanted to do those things. So it’s really important to know yourself, and it’s totally okay to be inspired by all sorts of different things, but recognize what it is that’s inspiring you. Is it truly that you want to do this thing that this person is doing? Or are you just inspired by the work they’re doing and their dedication to their goals?
Mary:
Yeah. This is why it’s so important to surround yourself with people who are also working towards goals, because that type of discipline and motivation is very infectious. If you are by someone who is consistently working towards their goals, who is pushing their own limits, who is asking the right questions, doing the thing, exploring it inspires you to do the same as well. Or it could offer you the motivation that you don’t have on days when you’re relying on momentum. This person who I know and adore is accomplishing their goals. I can do it too. You know, you may not have the same goals, but being able to be surrounded by people who share that energy with you, whether it’s business or strength, sports, or, you know, hobbies, whatever it is, surround yourself with people who are just as motivated and disciplined.
And it doesn’t have to be in the same thing at all. I actually encourage people to look into people who have different ideas and hobbies and activities because it’s just so awesome to see people pursue something different and see their dedication and let that inspire you to do the things you want to do. You are the sum of the five people you hang around. So just keep that in mind.
Kristin:
For sure. Don’t hang around with people that aren’t going anywhere, doing anything with them lives.
Mary:
With them lives! If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s to cut out those things in our life that don’t serve us. And if that happens to be people who you were once very close with but you’re realizing aren’t helping you in any way….And not that people are supposed to be designed to only solely benefit you, but you have people in your life because they enrich it in some way or they make you laugh or they do something. Wwe’re very selfish people. We have people in our life because they do something for us.
Kristin:
The people we tend to like, we like them because of how they make us feel.
Mary:
Yes. How they make us feel. And you know, if they don’t make you feel good, if they don’t help you in some way, or maybe you have an eight in your life like me, who maybe doesn’t make you feel good all the time, but who will be the honest feedback person. You know, you need all types of things. You don’t just need people to fill you with butterflies and rainbows. You need people to be like, “Hey, I see what you’re doing right now. What are you doing? Stop it. You’re not you’re self sabotaging or you’re doing this thing.” Or if you ask for someone’s opinion, you know, that person will give you their honest take because it’s the only way they know how to be, you know?
Kristin:
Right. So one thing that is happening now or happening soon is all of these “New year, new you” weight loss. Everyone’s going to be on the weight-loss bandwagon. And I think that when we are constantly bombarded with that, which we’re about to be bombarded with those messages, it’s easy to hop on board because everyone else is doing it. So you think, “I should be doing that too.” And I would caution you if you want to lose weight. Fine. Totally fine. You guys have listened to me say enough that I am 100% for it if that’s your goal. But I hate it when I see people going after things because it’s just what everyone else is doing. And they think that that’s what they are supposed to do. How many times have we scrolled through social media and seen people posting pictures of themselves in a certain pose? And before we know it, we’re doing it. That’s the power. That’s the power of seeing these messages; subconsciously, you start to act in that way or want that thing. So keep that in mind this time of year you don’t have to lose weight just because everyone else is talking about their New Year’s resolution and losing 10 pounds.
Mary:
And if that is triggering to you, if you have a disordered eating past or working through things like that, it is completely and honestly, 10000% fine to be like, “Hey person, I adore you. I cherish our friendship. I cannot follow you on social media right now, because this is all you’re talking about. And it is triggering to me, and I need to fill this feed with things that serve me. And right now, this doesn’t serve me. And I’m so sorry. And I support your goals. I just, I can’t see this.”
Kristin:
You don’t even have to say that, though. You can just mute. You can mute people, and they don’t show up in your feed, and you’re still friends with them. And you can go check in once in a while on their feed. But they’re not going to show up in your feed. And so I don’t even think it requires an explanation, like just mute them, just mute them because they don’t know. It’s not that you’re not supporting them. Their message is just not good for your brain at this moment. And that’s okay.
Mary:
Yeah. We all go through different phases. So, when you’re setting your goals, remember to make them realistic. Make them for what you want, make sure you know yourself enough to know what you want.
Kristin:
And your level of commitment. You need to know your level of commitment.
Mary:
What can you realistically do? How much do you want it? I think making a list is a great idea here. If you have three goals or three things that are your priority, write them down in the list and give them estimated hours per week they’re going to take. So let’s say you have a regular nine to five job. That’s obviously going to be a higher priority because you have to do that. Let’s say you’re also a mother. So, you’re going to have kids’ time to do that. That third thing, maybe that’s the goal. Maybe that’s the business. Maybe that’s powerlifting. Maybe that’s whatever it is. That needs like a realistic time expectation for the week. What, what can you realistically do in a week? If you have a full-time job and you are a mom, is it two or three hours a week you can spend solely dedicated to this thing? Freaking perfect. Do it. That’s more than zero. Two to three hours a week, that could be up to, you know, 12 hours a month, maybe more just depending. You just have to set your realistic expectations and your own guidelines. So that way, first of all, you don’t feel like you’re a failure. You’re accomplishing things. But also, you have realistic expectations for yourself about what time you have to commit. And then what level of commitment you want.
Kristin:
So, the bigger your goal, the more time it’s probably going to take, right? So we need to keep that into account. If your goal is to become the best powerlifter in the world, it’s a full-time job. Your nutrition has to be on point. Your recovery has to be on point. You have to be doing mobility work. You’re going to be training a lot. You’re going to be sleeping a lot. So, if we back up and just say, maybe you want to break a state record or whatever it is, or a national record. Okay, cool. How far away are you from that? And then gauge how much time that’s gonna take. If you need to train 12 hours a week and only have two hours a week, we need to just modify your goal.
We have to set more realistic expectations for how long it’s going to take to reach that goal. And I think that’s where people fall short. I will say 100%, I set really, really large goals for myself. And I do sometimes fall short of them, and I tend to be okay with that because what happens is it pushes me that much further. I might not get quite as far as I wanted to, but I got way further than where I was.
And so if that’s you, if you fall into that category of, “Yay, I can set these really big goals. If I don’t quite get there, it’s okay. I just pushed the needle a lot further than I would have if I didn’t set that as my goal to begin with,” then by all means, go for it. I think that comes down to personality type. If you are not hitting that goal and it will be devastating to you, you’re kind of sabotaging yourself by setting that goal to begin with.
Mary:
And remember, this is where a lot of that “hustle grind” culture comes into play. You cannot hustle and grind an extra 10 hours into anything a week. You just can’t.
Kristin:
You can for a little while.
Mary:
Yeah. You’re going to burn out. It’s going to be a bad, catastrophic burnout. It’s so easy to think that like, “Oh yeah, I could totally do this. I just need to be more disciplined and have more momentum and motivation.” There are some things that are… it’s just not going to be healthy for sustainability in the long run. It’s not going to be healthy for your family life. It’s not going to be healthy at all. So making sure that you are setting these realistic goals, realistic expectations for yourself. And then on the flip side, sticking to those realistic expectations for your realistic goals is going to get you so much further than going really, really hard for eight weeks and then burning out for 13 weeks afterwards.
Kristin:
We’ve talked in the past about having a list of priorities. I think it is really important. So write down what your main priorities are in life like Mary kind of already alluded to, you know, probably work, family, whatever – things that you cannot let fall by the wayside. And then set your goal. If your goal starts encroaching on those priorities, you maybe need to reevaluate and lower your goal a little bit if you have less time or less energy. And it’s like I said, encroaching on those priorities, that’s going to be a really big problem. So be really, really, really honest with yourself about what your priorities are in what you are and are not willing to sacrifice to reach your goal. Because I think that’s where people get into a lot of trouble is that they start realizing that they’re sacrificing things that they were never willing to sacrifice before. You gotta know what you’re willing to sacrifice.
Same thing with on a day to day level. I have a list of non-negotiables, or things that must be accomplished every single day. And then I have a list of, this is usually more of a mental list. I’m not quite that organized. I’m not quite that OCD. But you can write it all down if you want to. Then I also have a list of things that I want to get done if I have the time and the energy that are kind of high priority, but it would be okay if they weren’t done for like two or three days. But they’ve got to be done this week, you know? And so then you can gauge things that way too. Know your priorities, know your non-negotiables, and that’s going to help you figure out if the path that you’re on is a path you can continue on.
Mary:
And remember, sometimes your priorities can shift too. Especially if we’re talking business sense, or we’ve talked about this before, if you do have a really big goal and things have been pretty imbalanced, but now is the time to push. Sometimes it’s okay to be out of balance, especially if there’s an end in sight. Keep that in mind, but let’s say we’re talking business sense and your lowest priority in your top three is building your own business on the side. Well, maybe there comes a time where that is doing as well or better than your job that’s nine to five. That’s going to take some shifting of priorities. Do you continue building your business that looks like it’s going to take over the amount of money you’re making at your nine to five? Or do you scale back that business and keep your nine to five because you think it’s safer? Like there that’s totally fine to reevaluate. That’s why these are lists. Make the list with a rate in eraser, you just erase it.
Kristin:
Your priorities should change. They should change. Sometimes often I think that everyone’s priorities have shifted during this pandemic. I know my priorities have shifted a lot. I realized that some things I thought were extremely important are really not that important to me. Or they fell down the list quite a bit. And some things that I maybe took for granted are now at the top of my list.
Mary:
Yep. Yep. So your priorities can change. Remember as you’re setting goals, if you are a believer in New Year’s resolutions or you’re setting New Year’s goals, or right now you’re thinking of goals you want to set or your goals that you set before, set realistic goals. Know yourself, make sure they are your goals and then don’t forget to do the work.
Kristin:
Make sure they’re not your neighbor’s goals.
Mary:
Yeah. You don’t want that.
Kristin:
Don’t go after something just because your neighbor’s doing it or your best friend.
Mary:
Do it because you want to. Sometimes we can use our neighbors and best friends to gauge what we like, but just make sure that you want what you want.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in. We hope that you have a wonderful 2021. We hope that this was just a tiny little step forward and that you have big, wonderful things coming for you in 2021. And we will be back next week with a brand new episode.
Comments