Goal setting v. intentions: Flex and flow for lasting success
I’m more interested in giving people skills for a lifetime of living healthy in the real world. - Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Welcome back to the Work IN my friends! How is the new year going for you? Did you kick things off with a bang or a whimper?
Did you wake up on January first with your mind focused and calm, and full of great plans to execute? Or maybe you rolled over and buried your head still overwhelmed with all the things you didn’t get to accomplish last year.
Last episode we chatted with my friend Brian Berneman from conscious action and we discussed some of the reasons why people get stuck behind new year's resolutions as well as the importance of lifting awareness in order to make positive long lasting changes. If you missed it, it's episode 102.
I wanted to follow up on that conversation because what used to be a common practice, setting new year's resolutions, has really fallen out of favor becoming yet another casualty of our cultures black & white thinking. So I’d like to offer an alternative for this year with the caveat that while it’s great to think about new goals at the beginning of the new year it’s also important to remember that we can update them anytime. We can make intentional changes and choices anytime in your personal and professional life. And I’d argue that we should if we want to continue to grow and change for the better. Without those conscious changes, at some point we start to stagnate.
So I’d like to introduce you to the concept of flex and flow. Those of you in the fitness industry may be familiar with it on a physical level or if you’ve ever taken a movement or yoga class with that title might be sort of familiar with it. A Flex and flow type of class is when you hold certain poses or isometric for a certain amount of time and then you flow through the range of motion perhaps into the next position. It works great in yoga,pilates or core classes but other formats as well. Today we’re going to apply the same concept to setting,keeping and succeeding with intentional goals.
There are 3 mistakes that come up for people when they go about setting goals that keep them in a failure loop. These 3 really stand out to me and I’ve found that I’m guilty of all of these.
Leaving a vacuum: Many traditional new year's resolutions skew to the negative, meaning you’re trying to remove a habit. In other words your goal is to stop or quit doing something that you consider “bad”. First let’s reframe that by saying “unhelpful” instead of bad. Brian Berneman talked about that last week. Everything we do, whether we consciously choose to do it or it’s on autopilot, are behavior patterns that serve us in some way. Some of those are helpful, some might have been helpful to us at one time and are no longer helpful but are still deeply ingrained and some could simply be unconscious actions that have always been with us but as we become more aware we know aren’t helpful and never have been, like negative thought patterns and self talk.
Trying to remove or stop a deeply ingrained habit is very difficult, near impossible most times because as soon as you stop doing it you create a vacuum. Something is missing and that space needs to be filled. If we’re not consciously replacing it with something we want to be doing instead then it can be just as likely that another unhelpful habit will move in.
So when you become aware of something you want to stop doing, rather than simply saying stop doing it, we need to offer ourselves something to replace it with. Otherwise that vacuum simply suck you back into that unhelpful pattern.
It’s like training puppies. You can tell them over and over again not to eat your socks. But unless you tell them what you want them to do instead like chewing on the antler or the kong they will keep eating socks or underwear or toilet paper.
Diluting your motivation. That means overestimating how much you are realistically capable of accomplishing on a consistent basis. Basically your list of goals is too long. The number of habits that you want to change is too high. It’s true that willpower and motivation are renewable resources but it’s also true that they are limited. We only get so much each day. As your energy wanes during the day so does the willpower and motivation to do anything, even the stuff you’re not trying to change.The more you’re trying to do and change the more diluted your motivation becomes until by 3:30 in the afternoon you’re raiding the the chocolate chips at the back of the pantry. Maybe that’s just me.
Instead, let’s curate some of those goals down to an overall intention. Instead of trying to do everything, focus on one thing that might be small but that you can guarantee successfully accomplishing it on a consistent basis. Every time you do, you build another layer of trust in yourself which then in turn builds strength. It's like flexing your willpower and motivation. It’s the concept from the 4 agreements “be impeccable with your word”. That happens to be my mantra every time I make my bed.
All or nothing: This one is a killer and the number one symptom of perfectionists everywhere. Black & white thinking shows up for most people at some point in their lives. In goal setting, it’s when you set a goal to say walk 3 miles every morning and you couldn’t go Wednesday morning so that count’s as a failure and rather than walking later in the day or going out again on Thursday you quit or decide to wait till next Monday to try again.
Here you are trying to create a new healthy walking habit but everytime you quit you actually reinforce the opposite habit of giving up. Not to mention reinforcing all the negative thought patterns going on under the surface of those decisions. Your brain is constantly looking for evidence that you won’t or can’t succeed. The same thing often happens with diets right, that’s one of the reasons people hate them, of course they hate them, all or nothing dieting can make you feel like a failure.
But it’s not because you are a failure, or even that you have failed by skipping a day, it’s because that “all or nothing” thinking gets in the way of true long term success in any goal.
How do we address these three very human patterns if we want to become more intentional about our choices in the new year? Well let’s apply our flex and flow concept and reframe how we approach our goals from the start.
First we’re going to scrap the term goal and instead use the word intention. In some cases that might remove the specificity, the smallness if you will, from the actual behaviors that you’ll be doing but stay with me because I think this it’s important. Because what we want to understand and really become aware of is the deeper “why” of what we want. Intentions are much closer to that than a simple checklist of repeated actions that want to take on any given day.
So for example maybe your goals include quitting sugar, eating a pound of vegetables everyday, drinking 8 glasses of water and walking 3 miles everyday. But what is the intention behind those things? You are capable of all of those things individually but all of them fall under a single intention along the lines of improving your health.
This might fly in the face of all those health coaches and personal trainers out there trying to get their clients to set measurable goals. But anyone can do that for a limited amount of time. This is the problem with behavior change, we can get anyone to change behavior for 30 days and successfully reach a goal for a moment in time. I’m more interested in giving people skills for a lifetime of living healthy in the real world.
So the intention is part of the flex. It’s the strength that you can come back to and lean on when real life gets in the way. Now you can take conscious action in small bite size steps to move yourself closer to that intention. Make a list if you like. I’m particularly fond of them. Like the list above. Some of those things on your list might require big will power, some might be small. Don’t try to do them all, all at once You can start with the small things, maybe the smallest thing on that list that let you show up in your intention everyday with success. If some days you hit an obstacle, then choose another small thing on that list. Another example if you're a runner in training and one day the weather doesn’t cooperate, perhaps you choose something else that could support your body. An online yoga class or strength training. Did you run?No. Did you fail? No. You still showed up in your intention.
So with a solid intention, that flex, now everything you do in your day can support that intention not just those check the box goals. You can engage with the whole process with more joy, more ease in the effort. Now if one day you don’t get vegetables on vacation it’s not the end of the world because you were walking for 6 hours that day. This is the flow. Conscious action within your intention is the flow.
Now I’ve been using fitness and health examples today, but Flex and Flow intention setting works everywhere. Let’s take a business example. Maybe you’re looking to grow your business. You could set an income goal or you could stay with the intention of business growth. One only looks at numbers in your bank account. In order to grow you need to hire, you need to invest in yourself, or new technology maybe you need to pivot. As long as your intention of growth is clear, all of the possibilities can be on the table. There’s less fighting the bottom line. This is flex and flow.
One of the points that Brian Berneman touched on in last week's podcast was the idea of becoming more self aware. It’s an important piece to discovering what we want our intentions to be from the start. Often we are choosing what we believe are health goals but basing those choices on something external to us. Like body weight, how we look in our clothes or perhaps in a business setting how much money we’re earning as a measure of success. I humbly suggest that achieving all those things are the side effects of properly aligned intentions. Intentions that allow you to stand strong in your core beliefs, be flexible in how you respond to life's challenges, and ultimately trust yourself on your path to success. Flex and flow, give it a try this year.
Thanks for listening to The Work IN. Be sure to head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin for all the show notes. And - If you like what you heard and you are an independent coach, creator or entrepreneur who is looking for actionable, authentic accountability OR just someone to bounce ideas off for a little focus and direction in your business in the new year, head over to Savagegracecoaching.com. Our newest clarity session packages are open now. Get 2 private coaching sessions to reset your focus, direction, action and mindset. Whether you’re stuck on the starting block of your business, or looking to burnout proof your career, Savage Grace Coaching can help get you back on track. That’s savagegracecoaching.com/clarity
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
Savage Grace Coaching is all about bringing resilience and burnout recovery. Especially for overwhelmed entrepreneurs, creators and coaches in the fitness industry.
Schedule a free consulttation call to see if my brand of actionable accountability is right for you and your business.