Healthy Free Life Show

006: 3 Reasons We Fail to Reach Our Goals (and How to Fix It!)

May 05, 2021 Katrina Sequenzia Episode 6
Healthy Free Life Show
006: 3 Reasons We Fail to Reach Our Goals (and How to Fix It!)
Show Notes Transcript

Have you given up hope that you'll ever reach your goals? It's time to stop setting goals for your life and your health. In this episode, I'm going to share what to do instead of goal setting, because focusing on your goals is one of the worst things to do. In fact, if you focus only on your goals, you may never achieve them. Listen in as I explain just how to become the kind of person you want to be and how to create a system that gets you there one baby step at a time.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

00:35 Why it's important to stop setting goals for your life and your health.

02:01 A little bit of my backstory…

04:30 "If you're having trouble changing your habits and reaching your goals, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system.”- James Clear

05:15 Identify the faulty systems. 

06:52 Our daily health habits matter.

08:59 Focus on your identity, not the result, not the outcome. We must focus on our identity.

15:19 Second reason why we fail is that oftentimes we are so focused on the goal instead of being focused on the habits that we need in order to reach our goal.

19:10 Well, we gotta first determine one habit that casts a vote for becoming the type of person we want to become.

20:06 I want you to take baby steps. What we need instead is a step-by-step system that's going to create positive, healthy habits that will help us to reach our goals and our dreams.


Are you ready to put God at the center of your health journey and to finally achieve your health and wellness goals? Join me every week to learn how!

 

Resources mentioned:

Get your FREE Starter Kit:  kit.healthyfreelife.com

Atomic Habits, by James Clear > https://amzn.to/3b4pac1 

 

Connect with me!

Follow me on Instagram: @healthyfreelife

Connect with me on Facebook: @healthyfreelife

Visit my website: www.healthyfreelife.com


Until next week... bye for now. - Katrina

Episode #006: 3 Reasons We Fail to Reach Our Goals (and How to Fix It!)


Well hello, new creation. In this episode, I'm going to share why it's important to stop setting goals for your life and your health. And more importantly, I'm going to share what to do instead of goal setting, because focusing on your goals is one of the worst things to do. In fact, if you focus only on your goals, you may never achieve them.

I know that a ton of successful people tell us to create goals and then work really, really hard to achieve them. But if working hard was all that was required to reach our goals, wouldn't we all be successful? We know this isn't the case. And if you happen to be anything like me, then you've got goals on your list that despite adding them to your list year after year and working really hard, you've never achieved them.

Year after year, we become more and more discouraged believing that we may just never reach our goals, that something must be wrong with us, that we will always be this way. And at some point, we may even give up trying. I'm here to tell you, "Don't! Do not give up." The problem isn't you. You've just not had the right system for change. 


Since discovering the right system for change a couple of years ago, I have achieved goals in my life that I never thought possible. But it wasn't always like this for me, and it's time for a little bit of a backstory. 


I spent $200 on my very first Franklin Covey planner system, the soft, genuine leather cover, the years worth of planning pages, the bookmark, the pen, even the alphabetized Rolodex section. I was 25, living well above my means, so of course, I put the planner on my visa that I had no intention of paying off.

The planner promised me that I could achieve anything. 

Ever since then I've been collecting planners. Each one of them promising me to help me to achieve my dreams. I have boxes and boxes of old planners in my basement. I have saved every one of them. No joke. On any given year, I probably go through multiple yearly planners. I'm on my third planner this year,

and it's only May. Perhaps I do have a problem, or maybe I just have really big dreams, and I haven't learned to set systems in place to realize them yet. You see, I've been a passionate, lifelong learner of all things goal setting. I've read all the books. I've taken all the online courses. I've attended all the seminars and as we've already established, I've bought all the planners.

I create goals every single year. And I have set many, many goals in my life and by God's grace, I have achieved many of them, but truth be told I have failed more times than I care to admit to you. What I've learned through my goal-setting journey has absolutely contributed to my success at reaching many goals, but why, with all of this knowledge and all of this trying, do I fail at so many other goals?

Why can I succeed at launching Healthy Free Life and teaching thousands and thousands of women how to eat and live healthy, which, by the way, was a goal that I set in January 2017, yet I can't win at brushing my teeth every night before bed? Seriously, "brush teeth and wash face every night" has been rewritten on my annual goal list for years.

So now enter the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. It was in this book a couple of years ago, that I discovered why my goal-setting method was incomplete. I could finally see the holes in my method. I was so relieved and you will be, too, when James Clear said, "If you're having trouble changing your habits and reaching your goals, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves. Not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change." 

This book has and will change the entire way that I pursue my dreams, the dreams that God has placed in my heart, the dream of being a life-giving mom, the dream of reaching 1 million people with the message of health and healing, the dream of writing a book, the dream of speaking on stages to thousands of people, and the dream of having radiant health when I'm 80 years old so that I can still be serving God with all of myself.

I was finally able to identify the systems that were faulty in my life. You see Atomic Habits taught me that if I operate out of the wrong identity, I'm never going to reach my goals. If I don't believe myself to be an author that I'm not going to get that book written. If I don't believe myself to be a healthy woman, then I'm not going to make healthy choices. I will choose fast food for lunch instead of bringing the salad from home. 

And then James Clear also taught me that if I don't have the right healthy habits and systems necessary to make my dreams a reality, I'm never going to achieve them. If I don't ensure that the habit of sleep is solid, then I'm going to wake up exhausted and I'm not going to be all that my children need me to be that day.

I will likely be the opposite of my dream of being a life-giving mom. If I don't drink my daily allotment of water, then I'm going to suffer from low energy. I'm going to suffer from brain fog. I'm going to have dull skin, not to mention the long-term effects and diseases of dehydration. I definitely wouldn't call that radiant health.

If I don't ensure that I move my body and I succeed at striving to reach 10,000 steps per day, then I'm going to begin to lose agility and range of motion in my body as I age. As lack of movement diseases set in, I'm not going to be able to be on that mission field when I'm 80. Listen, our daily habits matter.

Our daily health habits matter. They matter for today. They matter for tomorrow and they definitely matter decades from now.  Maybe you, too, have goals and dreams in your life that you've never reached. Or maybe you've never even set a goal or pursued a dream in your life.

It is time to change all of that. I pray that through this podcast and through my programs, that you will have the understanding, the tools, and the resources that you need to create healthy habits that last a lifetime and ultimately enable you to reach your goals and your dreams. Yes and amen. This new methodology changed, not only everything for me personally, but also how I coach others to achieve their goals.

So let me ask you, "Do you really want to keep setting goals and never achieving them? Or would you like to learn a new way that will help you to actually achieve them so that you can finally get healthy so that you can finally conquer those cravings so that you can finally ditch disease? Or Hey, even write that book that has been on your heart for years?" So before we succeed at creating and sticking with good habits, first, we need to talk about and change our understanding of goals and habits in general. You see, most of us, as I said, have been going about goal-setting all wrong. 

So let's talk about first, why do we fail at reaching our goals and sticking with good habits? And then let's go ahead and talk about, more importantly, what are we going to do instead? So, the first reason why we fail at reaching our goals is that we don't realize that our old identity can sabotage our new plans for change. 

So here's what we're going to do instead. I want you to focus on your identity, not the result, not the outcome. We must focus on our identity.  Your behaviors and your habits are usually a reflection of your identity. Your behaviors and your habits are a reflection of who you believe yourself to be. If we never shift the way we look at ourselves, if we don't change identity before starting, then what's going to happen is that your old identity can sabotage your new plans for change. You may have never even considered an identity change before you set out to get healthy or to lose weight.

However, if your behavior of eating healthier is not in alignment with who you believe yourself to be, then it's going to be highly unlikely that you will reach your goals. So no matter how much you want to get healthy or, or no matter how much you are desperate to lose weight, if you operate from an identity of being fat, if you operate from a fat identity, or if you operate from a place of self- hate, you will never be in alignment with your goal of getting healthy.

The best motivation comes when a habit becomes part of your identity. It's one thing to say, "I'm the type of person who wants to get healthy." It's a completely different thing to say, "Healthy is who I am." And as Christians, we can take this a step further when we understand the importance of our physical body.

So, I want you to say this with me. "I am a healthy, loved, holy, temple of the Most High God." Let me say that again. "I am a healthy, loved, holy, temple of the Most High God." And then every healthy action that we take should flow from this identity. I am a healthy, loved, holy, temple of the Most High God. Listen, the goal is not to get healthy.

The goal is to be healthy. And I assume that you are listening to this podcast and that your desire is to identify as a healthy person. So listen, even if you don't feel it, or even if you don't look it yet. You don't look healthy, you don't feel healthy, yet, we can still identify on the inside, in our mind, as a healthy person.

So you might be wondering, "Katrina, how do I change my identity?" Well, let's talk about that. You first got to decide the type of person that you want to be. So, I recommend first, in the presence of and with the guidance of God that you must decide the type of person that you want to be. Who does God say that you are?

What are your principles? What do you value? Who do you wish to become? Because again, the goal is not to lose weight. The goal is to be healthy. The goal is not to exercise three times a week. The goal is to become an exerciser. And then what about things outside of health? So other goals, for example, the goal is not to serve at your local shelter weekly.

The goal is to become like Christ. And from that identity of becoming like Christ, that is someone who goes and then serves at the local shelter. The goal is not to write a book. The goal is to become an author. And then you say, what does an author do? The author writes, say 30 minutes every day. Again, the goal is not to write the book.

The goal is to become an author. Do you see the difference between them? So then once you have identified your desired identity, you've then got to prove it to your brain, that you are who you say you are by taking action. You've got to prove your identity to your brain by taking small steps towards your identity in order to reinforce it.

And then what's going to happen is that your identity is going to begin to emerge from those healthy habits. So you got to do the thing, right? Are you, are you sensing a trend in this podcast? I think I say it every single episode. You gotta take action. You gotta do the thing and listen, sometimes that's going to require that we gotta be it until we see it.

Am I right? We gotta be it until we see it. So when you eat fruits and veggies every day, you're casting a vote that reinforces that you are a healthy person. When you, in fact, exercise three times a week, then you're proving to your brain that you are an exerciser. You do it enough and guess what? You become an exerciser.

And then when you become an exerciser, you actually begin to do it without even fully thinking about it. It becomes who you are and you get up and you exercise. It no longer becomes a struggle. Is it always easy? No, it's not always easy, but you're an exerciser now. That is the goal. And then every healthy action you take is a vote for the type of person that you wish to become.

And if you act like a healthy person long enough, guess what? Eventually, you're going to BE a healthy person. Yes and amen. Now it's very important to remember that during this whole process of becoming who you desire to be, as you are on your way to that identity becoming true, you gotta remember that you are a work in progress and God's not finished with you yet.

So you gotta trust the process and keep moving forward towards the goal of who you wish to become. All right. So let's talk about the second reason why we fail at goals and what to do instead. So the second reason why we fail is that oftentimes we are so focused on the goal instead of being focused on the habits that we need in order to reach our goal.

So here's the new way. Here's what we need to do instead. We need to create new habits not new goals. So think about this. How many times have you tried dieting or eating healthier, but eventually you fall off the wagon and go back to old habits? Listen, we've all been there, myself included. Most of us have been led to believe that in order to achieve a goal, that we must simply set a goal and then try really, really hard to reach it. And then when we don't reach it, when we don't achieve that goal, it's because we don't have the willpower, the self-discipline or the perseverance. And then the voices in our head, they just add to the conversation with things like, "If I really wanted it, then I'd achieve it." Or, "I am such a failure." As you begin your healthy free life journey, listen, I want you to ignore any lies in your head that are telling you that you might feel. Again, because for those of us who have many failed attempts at getting healthy, it can be so discouraging to think about trying yet again, when you fear failure. Take heart, dear one, because when you follow the Healthy Free Life Way and you take that body, mind, spirit approach to getting healthy, and then you couple it with developing healthy habits the right way, you will succeed.

I see it every single day. I know you will succeed. So the more that we're learning about human behavior, we are becoming more understanding that the actions that we take every single day, they're just simply a response to the habits that we have in our life. To state it plainly, what you need to change is not necessarily your goals, but your systems and your habits.

And listen, it doesn't mean I don't want you to think that goals or dreams don't matter. They, they do. In fact, I recommend that you dream about who God wants you to become. I recommend that you sit down and you have a conversation with God and you prayerfully consider, "Who do I want to be in 10 years from now?"

And I want you to get a picture of that person in your mind. And I want you to begin to make goals, too, and take action towards becoming that dream of who God gives you. Okay. Dreams matter. Goals matter. But listen, they tell us where we're heading, but we do not need to focus on goals once we've set them.

Okay. We need to focus more on the systems and the habits that get us to our goal rather than the goal itself. So having solid healthy habits is what matters more than achieving our goal of losing weight. And I, I know that maybe your goal is to lose some weight or your goal is to ditch disease, but we have to have solid, healthy habits in order to help us actually achieve that goal.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, says, "We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our habits." Should I say that again? "We do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our habits." Ouch. We need to focus more on creating the healthy habits that get us to our goal rather than the goal itself.

So how do we do that? Well, we gotta first determine one habit that casts a vote for becoming the type of person we want to become. I want you to ask yourself, what would a healthy person do? What habits do I need to become a healthy person? But before you make that decision as to which habit you're going to go all in on, you've got to make sure that you pick the right habit.

So this leads to the third reason why we failed to reach our goals is that we underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. So, too often we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. That you think that if you need to lose a hundred pounds, it's going to require massive action to do so. But there's a new way.

 Here's what I want you to do instead. I want you to take baby steps, not giant leaps. You see, I know that in my own life, in the past, when attempting to reach a goal, like getting healthy or losing weight, I've believed that large giant steps are required in order to reach the destination. The problem is, is that we're led to believe that the only way to cross this huge gap before us is that we need to jump.

So whether it's the latest diet, the newest exercise video system, the next slim shake, pill, or wrap, we are promised that we will lose 30 pounds in 30 days, have buns of steel, and six-pack abs. So we go all in. We prepare, we clean out the pantry, we muster the willpower and we get a running start. The only problem is, is that we have not addressed our underlying habits nor have we addressed our identity.

So what if instead of attempting to jump over that gap, what if instead we built a bridge. We systematically laid down one small step and then another, and then another. And if you keep at it long enough, you're going to build a strong, solid bridge to get to the other side. What we really need is not another new diet, nor do we need a weight loss pill, because listen, we both know that losing 30 pounds in 30 days, it doesn't last.

What we need instead is a step-by-step system that's going to create positive, healthy habits that will help us to reach our goals and our dreams. And the good news is, is that we don't have to jump to the other side overnight. All we need to do is take one small baby step at a time. That's it. We take a step and then another baby step and then another baby step.


So when you think about a healthy habit that's going to help you to reach your goals for your health, you've got to break it down into a baby-step habit. James Clear recommends a two-minute version of the habit you want to build. And then what you're going to do is you're going to master the art of showing up every day.

That two-minute habit should be the smallest version of your habit that reinforces your desired identity. So in the beginning, honestly, it is less about what you are doing and more about habit formation. So when you decide to show up every day to exercise, it is less about the exercise. It's more about that habit that you are forming of becoming an exerciser.

So let's break it down. Let me give you some examples. So if the habit that you wanted to work on was movement, and you set out that you want to walk 10,000 steps each day. Well, we're not going to do that in the beginning. What you need to focus on first, your little baby step habit, is to put on your walking shoes every day.

That's what you need to focus on. And then if your goal is to exercise three days a week, well, what you'd need to work on first, the baby-step habit to work on first is to just put your workout clothes on three times a week, or just do the warmup of the exercise video. Eating healthier becomes eat one piece of fruit, or it becomes eat two bites of raw spinach with dinner.

We don't have to do it all. Drinking 64 ounces of water- the goal of drinking 64 ounces of water becomes drink eight ounces of water when I wake up in the morning. If your goal is to read the Bible in the entire year, and your goal is to become a Bible reader, well, you got to start small. I want you to read one verse each morning.

Do you see how there's a difference? When we try to do too much, it's too much for our brain. Our brain cannot change at that rate. It needs to be done in baby steps. This way, our brain doesn't even realize that we're changing. It's just happening. And then we wake up one day and we are a new creation. So, the question I have for you is this, "What small, daily baby step habit will you go all-in on that reinforces the identity of who you want to become?" Let me ask you that again. What small, daily baby-step habit will you go all-in on that reinforces the identity of who you want to become? That is your action step for this episode. So remember, this is how we achieve our goals and dreams for our life and health.

Remember, you're going to focus on your identity, not the outcome. You're going to create new habits, not new goals. You're going to take baby steps, not giant leaps. While James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, is an incredible, comprehensive guide as to what a habit is, how it works, and the science of how to change it, and I do recommend Atomic Habits to all of my students, I recommend they read it, but I will say, what the book is missing is how to actually apply it to our day-to-day life and really how to implement it specifically to the habits and the goals we want to achieve. This is where I can help. I've created a starter kit that will give you the first five baby steps to take on your health journey.

And I even have a seven-day devotional to help you reinforce your steps that are going to reinforce through scripture and prayer. So, if you would love to get my starter kit, go to kit.healthyfreelife.com to download it. Again, that's kit.healthyfreelife.com. You can also find the link to the starter kit in the episode notes, wherever you are listening to this podcast.

Now, let me leave you with this from 2 Peter 1:3-4, "His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who has called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these, he has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them, you may participate in the divine nature having escaped the corruption and the world caused by evil desires."

Until next time. Bye for now.