Setting fitness and life goals are important for purpose, motivation, and having benchmarks set so you can celebrate milestones to avoid burnout. Although there are so many positives to setting goals, there is a downside as well. What I learned from reading The Power of Discipline, by Daniel Walter was the term called the yo-yo effect.
The yo-yo effect describes the phenomenon where we set a specific goal and follow through on accomplishing it, but we then return to the same behaviors we had before setting the goal. A common example would be setting a goal to run a 5K, so you follow a training program for a few months and do great at the race, but now that you have completed the race, what happens? Some people may feel healthier and more productive from training the past couple of months, but many will return to the same old daily routine they had before starting their training program.
So how can we overcome this? This requires a core identity change and within the approach of the goal itself. Rather than setting out to train intensely for a month, it may work to set out to “become the type of person” who walks 10,000 steps a day or goes for a 20-minute run daily after work. Although you still have the race in the back of your mind and can use it for motivation, you are changing your identity from someone training for a one-time event to the type of person that goes for a walk or runs every day after work. At first, the changes may seem unnoticeable, and more days than not, you will not feel like setting out for your daily run or walk. Still, the feeling afterward will serve you as small steps of accomplishment, and before you know it you won’t be able to imagine your days without your daily movement. This strategy will not only allow you to accomplish your original goal of running a race, but it will also be a form of lasting change and maybe even push you towards running a marathon down the road.
To summarize…
- Goals are great, but consider what you will do once that goal has been completed.
- Set goals for daily behavior and identity change that will allow your original goal to serve as a milestone.
- Know it will be difficult at first, but if the activity serves you, your reward systems will train you to look forward to it.
To learn more from this book, visit https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/the-power-of-discipline-en.
