Is Setting Goals the Best Thing For You?

With the New Year come New Years resolutions. Generally when people think of a new years resolution, it generally has something to do with weight loss or getting fit. In fact, according to the University of Scranton in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, weight loss is the number 1 resolution of 2014 and getting fit or healthy is the number 5 resolution. Unfortunately though, only 8% of people who make a resolution are successful. This begs the question then, is setting a specific goal really the best thing to do, and especially setting outcome-based goals. For example, many people will want to lose say, 40 pounds over the year. Is that better than saying that they would like to cut out some of the sugar in their diet, sleep an extra hour a night, and make sure they exercise 4 days a week? Who do you think will really achieve better long-term success? If you ask me, setting that behavior based goal is much more beneficial.

A friend recently asked me why I am so against making a New Years resolution with a specific outcome. It’s actually quite simple; you set yourself up for failure. Imagine that person again who wants to lose 40 pounds over the year. They may not be the most informed person so they decide to cut out some of their fat and red meat thinking it is the best thing for them to do, and they hop on an elliptical for 30 minutes 3-4 times a week. Depending on their starting state, they may see weight start to fly off; in that first month they might lose 8 pounds, and that is awesome and they will just continue to do that. Eventually it will slow down though, so naturally you up the volume, right? So now they start eating even less, maybe as little as 1200 calories a day for a male and 800 for a woman, and they decide to go on the elliptical for 45 minutes every day. They can’t figure out why they aren’t losing much weight anymore. Eventually, they may get to that 40 pounds, but it nearly killed them to do it. They look at the scale though and once they see they have lost it, they think they can start eating a little more now, maybe have an occasional beer or donut, maybe not go to the gym as often, and then within the next month they have gained 10 pounds. What happened? Well, they were killing themselves. It isn’t sustainable, and they get disappointed and have failed.

In my opinion, you’re much better off setting behavior-based goals. Let’s say I’m working with someone who wants to lose those same 40 pounds, and that is their only goal, well it becomes my job to help them set better and more effective goals. It could be as simple as that first month, stop drinking pop and eating candy; something that would generally be accepted as good to do, do your best to eliminate sugar, especially refined sugar. Next maybe start getting in the gym 3 days a week and include some strength training. Eventually, you get them to set those short term behavior based goals that will have them living a happy and sustainable life where they may lose that weight, but if not, they feel happy and healthy because they are.

That’s just one specific goal related to weight loss, but it can be applied to anything. For example, you have 2 people who run a marathon in 4 hours. One wants to run the next one in 3:30 and the other simply wants to improve on those 4 hours. They do the exact same plan and then on race day they both run a 3:38 marathon. The person who wanted to run that 3:30 marathon is incredibly disappointed in himself and feels like he failed even though he made an incredible improvement, whereas the runner who just wanted to improve is ecstatic because he was able to drop 22 minutes off of his marathon. Setting that specific goal only hurt the first runner, whereas the behavior goal set the second runner up for success.

I don’t want this to seem like goals are bad, we just need to be setting goals that are sustainable and can set us up for success. Regardless of if it is fitness related or not, setting a specific outcome goal is rarely the best motivator and idea. We should be changing our lives by changing our behavior.

Here is the ultimate goal for every single person no matter what you want. Try and be 1% better than you were the day before. Improve everyday. If you are able to be 1% better than the day before every single day, then after 70 days you will be 100% better. Doesn’t that sound pretty great? Being 100% better in just 70 days? That sounds amazing to me. Instead of focusing on being better down the road, focus on being better today.

To a better day, week, month, year, and most importantly, to a better life.