In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, he talks about how setting a goal doesn’t actually determine the outcome.
Think about every person who competes in the Olympics. Each athlete’s goal is likely to come home with a gold medal.
If I had to guess, Olympic participants likely aren’t striving for bronze…or no medal at all.
They all want to win.
This illustration Clear uses in Atomic Habits is a powerful way to understand that the goal doesn’t actually matter that much.
What matters far more than the goal itself is the method by which you plan to achieve those goals.
How do you plan to achieve this goal?
Clearly we see that just setting a goal doesn’t mean we’ll actually achieve it.
So, what’s next then? How do we make our goals into a reality?
First we need to break down our goal.
We need to think about the practical steps that will get us closer to the desired outcome. For example, if your goal is to lose 20lbs there are two obvious components to think about.
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Movement
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Food
In order to lose weight we know we need to
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Move our body more
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Eat differently
What habits would help us move our body more & eat differently?
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Complete all 6 LJW workouts each week
Implementing these two habits allows us to easily check in with ourselves to see if we’re on if we’re inching toward our goal.
Each week we can evaluate and grade ourselves. This evaluation of our week isn’t about beating ourselves up if we didn’t do what we said we were, but is just an honest check in.
Did I do what I said I was going to do?
Is this still important to me?
What can I do to make it more of a priority this upcoming week?
In having a weekly check in, we also have a dedicated time to celebrate if we did the dang thing! We’re one week closer to accomplishing that goal thanks to our incredible habits!
Breaking down these goals into daily habits IS the secret to actually achieving your goals this year!
Remember, if just setting the goal got us the result we wanted, we’d all be perfect well-rounded individuals. It takes daily, intentional action, and evaluation to see if we’re really going to make our goal into a reality.
We get to put in the work and that means we get to take all the credit for making it happen!
Cheers to 2026, friends!
Let this be the year that your goals become reality!
