Mike Lee is a Remote Coach and Partner in Method Fitness and a coach on More Life Adventures retreats. As we start the year with refreshed goals and intentions, he is helping us dig deeper into our why and our habits.

For many, 2020 will have been a really tough year, and for some it will have been a fantastic test. One thing is for sure, you will have been tested, and you will have been forced to adapt in a way that at the beginning of the year you likely couldn’t have imagined possible. But now it’s the new year, and as with every year, individuals, businesses and teams will be reviewing their goals. Whilst this blog is not about goal setting as such, we will touch on it a little.

The art of goal setting is one that has been used effectively to advance companies for a very long time. Google are renowned for their goal-setting ability, taught to Larry Page by John Doerr (author of Measure what matters). Google are a company who set goals and then proceed to systematically crush them.

So why do so many of us fall short?

Often it comes down to a number of factors; is the goal important enough to us or is it simply arbitrary? Is the goal realistic? Do we have sufficient motivation or discipline to achieve this goal? Let’s look at the difference between discipline, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, all of which have their place in the goal achieving world.

Extrinsic Motivation

As a Personal Trainer and Coach, this is often the kind of motivation that I see the most. Extrinsic motivation is pursuing our goal based on factors that do not come from within. For example, I have a wedding. A wedding, for most, is a once in a lifetime event, it’s not uncommon to want to look and feel the part for your wedding. As extrinsic motivation goes, a wedding is a very powerful motivator. When times get tough during training, or if you’re reducing your food intake to lose body fat, simply that event can keep you motivated and on track with whatever your fitness goals might be. At a fundamental level, extrinsic motivation often stems from events, or perceptions that you believe are important enough to you that you stay on track with your goal.

More examples of this might be, you’ve set yourself a target to fit into a specific dress size, you’ve set yourself a target to reach a certain weight class when competing in a weightlifting or martial arts event or even more powerfully for a lot of people, they need to hit a certain level of fitness in order to perform a task that they’ve signed up for (marathon/hike/climb etc).

So when does extrinsic motivation not suffice?

We can often let other people’s opinions, or social media dictate what we believe to be important. This can then often influence what we believe are our goals when in fact they are simply a product of what we see online. A highlight reel if you like. It’s important therefore to take a step back and assess whether our goals are built from a number of outside influences that have so strongly had an impression on us that we believe them to be our own internal desires.

A nice way of doing this is to go down our social media and recognise what kind of photos make us feel good when we see them, and what kind of photos make us feel bad. For everything that makes us feel bad, recognise why that is before simply unfollowing. Is the picture of the girl lifting more weight than you making you feel bad because you feel like you’re not capable? Is there an element of jealousy? Is this something you want to do? Answer all those questions before hitting the unfollow button. After all, there was a reason you followed that account in the first place.

Intrinsic Motivation (Inspiration)

In my job, I often try to find the inspiration within someone.

What inspires them to follow this goal that they’ve chosen? What is their reason “why?” If that “why” is powerful, no amount of extrinsic motivation can overpower that. When talking to someone about their intrinsic motivation, I often get them to picture how they will feel when they achieve that goal. Do they get excited about it when they’re talking to me? This is often the difference between establishing whether this goal is something they truly want to achieve or whether it’s something they’ve been led to believe that they want. Intrinsic motivation, as the name suggests, comes from within, the feeling of achieving that goal within themselves is something so powerful. For many, this is often more geared towards health and fitness as opposed to aesthetics and visual appearance.

Often people will come away from a specific talk, retreat and someone will have helped them to find that inspiration. Inspiration is often driven by a feeling of happiness, or a desire to be happy and more importantly a powerful understanding that the goal or the journey that they are pursuing is what will bring them there.

When intrinsic motivation or inspiration is strong, it is very easy to stick to a task, because that task and the end goal really truly means something to you. The juice is well worth the squeeze in this case.

Discipline

On every journey, whether it’s a health and fitness journey, a business journey or any other kind of journey, there will be obstacles. Discipline is the ability to keep going with your journey despite the fact that it might simply be easier to take a rest that day. Discipline is what forms habits.

When you were a kid, you were told to go brush your teeth. No one (I hope) has to tell you to do that as you get older as it’s a habit that has been ingrained into you through discipline as a child. I found myself recently undertaking morning walks. Some days it was cold, some days it was raining, but every day I went for my morning walk. The purpose was simply to clear my mind and get blood moving around my body to start my day. After about 10 days, it became habitual, I wouldn’t have dreamed of skipping my walk for anything unless that thing came higher up my priority list. It didn’t mean that there weren’t days where I didn’t want to go, it just meant that I was disciplined enough to continue.

This is something that a lot of people struggle with nowadays, there’s a lot of social media saying, you be you, be free, do what you want. Unfortunately, sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do, having the courage to continue on your path despite adversity, is what will lead you to become a powerful habit former.

I know people who used to hate exercise, at the beginning, they outsourced their discipline to a personal trainer as they knew they didn’t have it to begin with. Over time it was my job and my pleasure to encourage them to come in on days without me, at the same time, to perform their workouts for them, not for me. It only took a few more weeks of discipline for them to start forming habits. Their workouts became important enough to them that they were no longer interested in staying up till 2 am, their next day performance trumped one more episode on Netflix.

It’s very likely that your health and fitness journey will combine elements of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and require times of discipline. Hopefully, this blog post will make you assess or reassess your goals to confirm that you are truly working towards something you want and if it’s something that is difficult and will challenge you then you will be able to identify that you may simply need a little discipline to get through this period.

Over to you

What is your main goal this year?

Can you tie it to a personal reason to get yourself fired up?

Is there a new habit you need to create, to help you get there faster?