We have probably all made New Year’s Resolutions. Spent a dizzy New Year’s Eve surrounded by our friends and family, swept up in the excitement of a blank slate. A new opportunity. A chance to finally do the elusive “thing,” whatever that may be. We may even have the same resolution each year. The same habit, goal, achievement or major accomplishment that we hope will just magically happen for us because of the new year.
Surprisingly, simply declaring it out loud, whispering it to ourselves, even writing it down in our journal doesn’t mean that we will accomplish it. Sure we have great intentions. We are convinced that this year will be the year. Then it’s March (or even later in January) and we haven’t even started. Or maybe we started and went strong for a couple of weeks or days, but then it got hard, or boring, or some other shiny object came along and distracted us from our resolve.
So am I saying to not make goals? Am I here to shit all over making New Year’s Resolutions? Do I suggest we all throw in the towel and never dare hope to achieve the seemingly unacheivable? Nope. I’m here to say that simply making a goal is not enough. It’s not enough to simply declare your intention without putting in the work. We all know this. We don’t think we can run a marathon without training. We don’t really think we can write a book without a regular writing habit. We have to realize that we won’t lose weight, get our dream job, move to Tahiti, or retire on a lake without putting in the work. I’m here to say that we have been going about it all wrong. Simply muscling through it doesn’t work.
James Clear, in his insanely popular book, Atomic Habits, had the right idea. He talks about layers of goals. He describes it like an onion – you know, with layers. The outer layer is the goals we all think of when we say the word goal. The outer layer is Outcome Goals. This is the New Year’s Resolutions, what we want to have or to achieve. But that outer layer of the onion is thin. If you held it up to the light, you could almost see through it. So an outcome goal is important, but it can’t truly stand alone. We can’t expect to just set it and forget it.
Peeling back the onion, you have many, many thicker layers beneath. Clear calls these Process Goals. This is the habits, systems, processes that you must put in place and plan for in order to take the steps towards achieving your outcome goals. This is where you systematically build the small habits that lead to routines that will produce the results you are wanting. You need to build the habit of lacing up your running shoes every morning after you brush your teeth, then run around the block once (or even just halfway down the street), before you build to running a mile, then three miles, etc. until one day, you are running a marathon.
At the very center of the onion is the foundation for all of it. The core = your identity. Who do you need to be in order to implement your habits? How do you need to show up every day to achieve the goals you aim to achieve? What values and virtues do you need to embody in order to live the life you want? The answers to these questions are at the core – of life and of the onion. Spending some time pinpointing the actual words and the accompanying feelings they evoke will allow you to really hone in on what mindset you need to move forward in the way you desire.
Finding ways to reflect on ALL of the layers every single day is the way to see results. I have visual reminders in different areas of my daily life. I have the layout of my yearly plan on my laptop home screen so that I see it when I sit down to work every day. I have my year mapped out by value, goal, affirmations, and habits/processes. It’s in a prominent place as a constant reminder of what I intend. I also have notecards of the core values I have chosen for the year in a stack on my desk. I cycle through them, focusing on one per week to reflect upon in my journal writing and further affirmations. I also have a rock that I decorated. It sits on my desk. On it I have written my main core value for the year (this year it is ALL IN). When I am distracted or “stuck,” I pick it up and reflect on what I want and, more importantly who I need to be and what values I will embody to move through the year in the way that I choose.
Comments