Habits shape your identity. So Change Your Habits to Hit Your Goals!

If you want to hit your goals we need to create new identities and start new habits. According to author James Clear of ‘Atomic Habits’.

Look at it this way in order to hit your goals, ‘If you keep casting the same votes you’ve always casted, you’ll keep getting the same results you have always received’. As the saying goes, ‘If nothing changes, nothing is going to change’!

So how do we hit your goals ?

Changing your identity is a two-step process.

1 – Decide the type of person you want to be.

2 – Prove it to yourself.

In the area of health and fitness, this could be to wear a dress size 2 smaller.

Knowing the outcome, you wish to possess is all you need to form your action plan. Let us start from there and work backwards.

Ask yourself.

In order to have this goal what would I be doing?

Who is the type of person who is leaner, stronger and fitter wearing size…?

What actions are they performing daily?

How could I perform something similar that works for me?

You could ask yourself ‘What would a healthy person do’? This is a great mantra to hit goals in any area of your life.  Do you remember those wristbands that used to have the words, ‘What would Jesus do’? They were around in the late 90’s and they worked! They worked by constantly reminding yourself, throughout the day of your current mantra, to reinforce the person you want to become.  You simply would look at your arm and ask yourself ‘what would a size X do’ or ‘what are healthy persons eating for lunch’? Any mantra would work here.

You don’t have to win all the time to hit your goals

In an election you don’t have to win all of the votes, you just have to win majority. It’s unlikely that you’re going to win every action that’s going to help you toward your goal. You may slip from time to time, it doesn’t matter! Are healthy people perfect with exercise, nutrition and lifestyle choices?? Of course not! But they believe they are healthy and that’s a key difference. Here is why.

Your beliefs shape your decisions and therefore your habits!

It’s not that you are wanting to get fit. It’s that want to become healthy. Those words formulate a belief telling you that you believe you are healthy person. You’ve made a choice. You are now acting as a healthy person.

Unfortunately most of us are stuck in the past with those same beliefs, trying to create new habits. Another example is:

A person who says ‘no’ to a cigarette because ‘they’re trying to quit’, still believes they are a smoker who is trying to quit.

But a person who declines a cigarette because they ‘have quit’, believes they are a non-smoker and are acting in such fashion.

Your habits shake your identity.

And

Your identity shapes your habits.

Your focus should always be on becoming the type of person you want to be, rather than achieving one specific outcome.

By stacking small wins together toward your desired outcome we can reinvent ourselves.

Remember you don’t need to win at every practice, just the majority.

So what ‘Mantra’ will you take on board towards the person you want to be??? Me… ‘I am strong fit and functional’!

Make it happen.