STOP RUNNING HABITS AND START BUILDING ROUTINES

Goals can make us complacent. Studies have shown that people’s brains can confuse goal setting with achievement. This effect is even more pronounced when people inform others of their goals. Just because you set into motion the act of being healthy, like making an appointment to meet with a personal trainer, you still must take action and actually do the workouts. There really is no short-cut.

Here’s the deal. It’s not enough to have a goal. You also need a tactical and practical way to reach it. If you want better results, set aside the act of setting goals. Focus on your system instead. Building better systems requires a continuous investment in your health. There will be shifts. There will be stumbles. The work is in the doing. Spending more time in the good place than in the bad is the end game. Small wins eventually gets you the championship, and more importantly, you’ve built a long-term system that works.

“If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” - Jim Rohn

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STOP RUNNING HABITS AND START BUILDING ROUTINES

“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” —John C. Maxwell

Change is hard. We all want to become better people - stronger and healthier, a better friend or family member. Even if we get really inspired and do things better, it’s tough to actually stick to new behaviors. James Clear in his ground-breaking book Atomic Habits tells us in order to change your behavior for good, you must start believing new things about yourself.

Imagine how you typically set goals. You might start by saying “I want to lose weight” or “I want to get stronger.” If you’re lucky, someone might say, “That’s great, but you should be more specific.” So then you say, “I want to lose 20 pounds” or “I want to get rid of the discoloration on my skin.” These goals are centered on outcomes, not identity.

Many people begin changing their behavior by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads us to outcome-based habits. The more realistic and beneficial alternative is to build identity-based routines. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become.

powerful connection between the person you are now (20 pounds overweight) and where you want to be (the woman that can look in the mirror and think, “Damn, I’m looking fine!”) You just must say to yourself, “I want to be the kind of person that feels in control of my fitness. Or, “I want to be the type of person who can look in the mirror and like what I see.” Then you can do the work of building the systems you need to get closer to being that kind of person.

For example, say you want to become the type of person who drinks more water every day. It’s time to get granular here and build your system. (This is what I did and it worked like a charm.)

Example

1. Determine how many ounces you want to drink each day (hint: we suggest half your body weight in ounces.) 2. Next, leave nothing to chance. Have enough bottles filled up every day, ready to go. Every night before you go to bed, take those empty bottles and fill them up for the next day. This means, you must figure out if you will do this right before you get in bed, possibly after you brush your teeth and wash your face, or right after you put the kids down. 3. Break it down even further. If you need to drink 80 ounces a day, make sure you have either 2 - 40-ounce water bottles or 4 - 24-ounce bottles in your arsenal. (And it doesn’t hurt to have one right by your bedside as well.) Building a New Routine to Drink More Water!

These are the tools you need to make building the system a success.