As the confetti settles and the last echoes of "Happy New Year" fade away, I'm reminded of my New Year's Eve wedding and the profound sense of beginning anew it instilled in me. That's why this episode is dedicated to the art of self-reflection and goal setting, not just as a seasonal tradition, but as a transformative practice that can steer the course of our lives. I'll take you on a personal journey through the highs and lows of setting intentions, sharing the heartfelt story of how my own New Year's resolutions have evolved—from festive ambitions to a deeply rooted pursuit of personal growth.
Goal setting can sometimes feel like a mountain that's insurmountable, especially if we're scaling it with the wrong equipment. That's where I challenge the one-size-fits-all mentality of popular programs like the 75 Hard challenge, and instead, advocate for a more individualized touch. I delve into the nuances of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, supported by the insights of psychological experts Sheldon, Elliot, and Deci, to reveal why some goals stick and others slip away. In this heartfelt discussion, I emphasize the power of aligning goals with our innermost values and passions, paving a path that's uniquely ours to tread.
As we wrap up this episode, I invite you to contemplate self-concordant goals—those that not only resonate with who we are but also connect us to something greater. I'll share strategies for setting purposeful objectives that bolster our sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, creating a harmonious balance that elevates our wellbeing. You'll leave this conversation equipped with the knowledge to choose goals that not only promise a year of intention but also a lifetime of fulfillment—goals that are as unique and personal as the stories we write with each new chapter of our lives.
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com
Thanks for listening!
Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and leave a review!
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
As the confetti settles and the last echoes of "Happy New Year" fade away, I'm reminded of my New Year's Eve wedding and the profound sense of beginning anew it instilled in me. That's why this episode is dedicated to the art of self-reflection and goal setting, not just as a seasonal tradition, but as a transformative practice that can steer the course of our lives. I'll take you on a personal journey through the highs and lows of setting intentions, sharing the heartfelt story of how my own New Year's resolutions have evolved—from festive ambitions to a deeply rooted pursuit of personal growth.
Goal setting can sometimes feel like a mountain that's insurmountable, especially if we're scaling it with the wrong equipment. That's where I challenge the one-size-fits-all mentality of popular programs like the 75 Hard challenge, and instead, advocate for a more individualized touch. I delve into the nuances of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, supported by the insights of psychological experts Sheldon, Elliot, and Deci, to reveal why some goals stick and others slip away. In this heartfelt discussion, I emphasize the power of aligning goals with our innermost values and passions, paving a path that's uniquely ours to tread.
As we wrap up this episode, I invite you to contemplate self-concordant goals—those that not only resonate with who we are but also connect us to something greater. I'll share strategies for setting purposeful objectives that bolster our sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, creating a harmonious balance that elevates our wellbeing. You'll leave this conversation equipped with the knowledge to choose goals that not only promise a year of intention but also a lifetime of fulfillment—goals that are as unique and personal as the stories we write with each new chapter of our lives.
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 200,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
Website: www.kimberlybeamholmes.com
Thanks for listening!
Connect on Instagram: @kimberlybeamholmes
Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the podcast and leave a review!
WE HAVE A NEW WEBSITE!!
Visit www.itstartswithattraction.com to check it out!
I love the beginning of the year. For as long as I can remember, new Year's Day has been one of my favorite holidays and it hasn't really been until the past 10, 15 years that I've loved New Year's Day for a different reason. I used to love it in high school and in college because I loved the New Year's Eve parties and all the sparkles and all of the awesome clothes that people would wear to New Year's Eve parties. But the older I've gotten, the more I have valued sleep. So I actually don't remember the last time I stayed up for New Year's Eve, although fun fact my husband and I got married on New Year's Eve and kissed at midnight, so that was super fun. So New Year's Eve has always held a special place for me. But as I've gotten older, new Year's Eve and New Year's Day has been a set aside time on my calendar where I've taken intentional time to reflect on the previous year and to look forward on the year to come and to really think about how have I grown in the past year and who do I want to continue to become in the next year. I think about where do I want to be in three to five years. What do I want to accomplish? How do I want to work on myself physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually and I really think bigger picture, five years, 10 years, even 20 years down the road, even thinking about when Rob and I are celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary. What are the things that we would have wanted to do together or experience together or accomplish over that time? And I think about that at the beginning of every year only because it's a great time already set aside on the calendar to do so, and that's what I love about New Year's Eve and New Year's Day it's a time to do business with the past and to dream about what the future can look like, and I love that, and I love setting goals. I love moving towards becoming a better person, which is a huge reason why I even have this podcast to help people focus on becoming the best versions of themselves physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, because that's what I want to do. If y'all haven't realized already, this podcast is really just an extension of my own interests and desires and I have amazing conversations with people that I want to share with others, but really I'm having conversations with them because I think that they're really cool. All of that to say in this episode we're going to be talking about goal setting, goal progress and goal attainment, and we're even going to be talking about some of the fad diets or fad I don't even know what to call them now but things like the 75 hard that people do or sign up to do, and I'm going to talk about my beef with that. If we're going to be completely honest. By the end of this episode, here's what I hope. I hope that you have a better understanding of what it means to set a goal, why goals are important for you and how to go about setting the goals that you really want to work towards this year.
Speaker 1:Let's dive in to today's episode. All right, y'all, I have some beef with some of these new things that are out there that make these amazing claims that if you do this thing, it's going to 10x your self-esteem and your confidence, and blah, blah, blah and all of these things out there, all this sensationalism trying to get people to do these diets Like I wouldn't even call them diets anymore. There's a lot of programs or ideas that people have that they're trying to get people to do because it's their brand and it's what they want to do, and one of these things is 75 hard, and I'm not trying to knock the person who created it. I think that there's good intention behind it, but I do have a lot of problems with things like this. So if you don't know what the 75 hard is, it's basically when it's this thing where people I don't even know how it got started. I guess it's a book and it's subtitled as the tactical guide to winning the war with yourself to 100x actually is the claim that it makes. I haven't pulled up as I'm talking about it. So 100x your self-confidence, which just is totally, completely not grounded in research at all. Like these, people I highly doubt have taken a pre-test of their confidence levels or self-esteem levels and then a post-test, and if they did like highly doubt anyone's experiencing 100x growth in their self-esteem levels when they do this.
Speaker 1:But here's the deal. What is something like the 75 hard? The 75 hard gives you a set of things that you should do over the next 75 days, and some of those things this is not comprehensive, but an overview is to drink a gallon of water. To work out twice a day. One of those workouts has to be outside. To stick to any structured diet of your choosing. That may be my favorite part of this whole thing, and I'll tell you why later. And it's not because it's a diet Reading 10 pages of a book and taking a photo of yourself every single day. So they kind of prescribe to you do this and here are the amazing results you're going to get.
Speaker 1:A side note here is that one of the things I'm really interested in in life in general is opportunity, cost and being mindful about the time that I invest in something and the benefit I'm going to get for it, and is that the best use of my time? Otherwise, I'm wasting my time on something that I could be using elsewhere to have a greater benefit from it. So one example of this is there's a lot out there people talking about cryotherapy or the float tanks and things like that, saying that there's a lot of great research about using these things. But for me, for the time it would take and for the cost it would take to go to one of these places that has cryotherapy or to do the float tank and, you know, be in it for 45 minutes to an hour when I actually look at the research of what is way more evidence-based and what we have more data around, it would be so much better to use that same hour of my time that I would take to go to float or whatever, instead of doing that to actually go and do a zone two workout. There's just so much more evidence about how that is a better use of my time, especially for lifespan and health span. So that's an example of this opportunity cost.
Speaker 1:So why am I saying this? Because when I look at things like the 75 hard this is a lot that is being asked of someone to do or really more being demanded, and there's a lot around it. There's a lot of wording and messaging around it of do this to become mentally strong, mentally tough, grittier all of those words. So there's kind of this like shame going into it where there's a lot of external pressure being put on a person of you. Should do this because it's someone else's wanting you to. Someone else is saying it's best for you or doing it, or doing it because you feel like you ought to, like you want to be grittier, so you ought to do to do this in order to do that. Okay. But when we look at it, when we actually look at the claims of what's involved in programs or challenges like this, then what we see is there's a lot of and I'm not even going to break this down thing by thing Actually, here's here's how I'm going to say it.
Speaker 1:I have been doing three years, which is not as long as the researchers that I'm going to be quoting, researchers like Kenneth Sheldon, elliot, ryan and Desi people who have done a lot of work about goal setting, about goals, about self determination theory. They've been doing this for decades and, in summarizing their research, here's what we know when people are told what they should do as the goal that they need to pursue, they are not only less likely to follow through with it and actually accomplish it, but they don't experience the same kind of positive benefits as they would if someone were to autonomously set their own goal. So it's the difference between what they call a controlled versus personal, or controlled versus autonomous. I feel controlled if you're telling me the goal that I need to do, and if I miss it, then I don't get the same kind of positive benefits. But also because I feel like my worth in your eyes is dependent on me doing it. I might cheat, I might work around it because I'm trying to impress someone else.
Speaker 1:This also aligns with extrinsic motivation or external motivation, which is when you work towards a goal because someone else tells you you need to. That's a type of motivation, but it is not at all the best kind of motivation. And when we really begin to look at motivation, at goals, all of these things, what we see in the research is that there is a certain type of goal called self-concordant goals, and this was the breakthrough research that was done in 1998, 1999 by Sheldon and Elliott, by Sheldon and Kasser. When we look at what they've done and what they did was they looked at basically the different types of motivation that a person has, and there's five different types. Well, there's actually six different types of motivation if we include the lack of motivation or a motivation. But there's five different types of actual motivation intrinsic, introjected, identified all of those all the way to intrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1:And intrinsic motivation is the real key to all of these great benefits. And here's what intrinsic motivation is very simply you do something because you want to do it, because you genuinely find joy, happiness, contentment in doing that thing, because you find it fun, because it's something that you will just wake up the next day and want to do. That is intrinsic motivation and if there was going to be a hierarchy of motivation, then intrinsic motivation is the penultimate. It is the one that is the best because it is the internal drive that keeps people going even when things get hard. Intrinsic motivation Now the types of goals that people set and how it relates to intrinsic motivation really matters.
Speaker 1:75 hard. Going back to that is an example. If I am told like in this challenge to 75 hard, here are all the things you have to do, I don't want to do some of those things and they could even be things that are good for me. Although I would argue that drinking a gallon of water is Like, I would really want to see the research on why a gallon there's a lot of other research out there about it really depends on a person's activity level, where they live, their electrolyte balance, like. I don't know why a gallon of water was chosen, but you know, for example, again, all of these things are probably grounded in a good reason for this person and the creator of this probably had an intrinsic motivation to do several of these things when they did it.
Speaker 1:But the problem becomes when you begin to tell people this is what you need to do for the next 75 days and then they begin to do that they actually, if they fail along the way which there's a high likelihood to do because they're not Every person who signs up for this is not intrinsically motivated to do these things, and if they don't align with what a person's desired future state is, then there is no intrinsic motivation or there. It would be very highly unlikely for there to be any intrinsic motivation to actually follow through with these things. So then what ends up happening is someone signs up for the 75 hard. They get 30 days in. I actually had a friend that this happened to. You get 30 days in and they forgot to take the progress picture of themselves, because you have to take a picture of yourself every day. Why? Because someone's telling you to, because it's part of this challenge. He didn't do it that day and just ended up giving up on the whole thing and said you know what? I'll just start later. I didn't do that part, so I'm just going to disengage. It's actually called goal disengagement and the research I'm going to disengage.
Speaker 1:But here's the other thing that happens when you tell yourself you're going to do something and then you don't do it, which is called goal failure in the specific arena of goals, you take a hit to your self-esteem. It may not be a big hit, but there is absolutely a negative effect that occurs to your overall well-being and, as part of that, your self-esteem. This is why it's really important that you're cognizant and intentional about the kinds of goals that you set, because the worst thing that you can do is set a goal for yourself just because you joined the challenge at the gym or did the 75 hard, because someone dared you to, or whatever, and if it's not something that you actually are really wanting to do, because you genuinely want to do it and there's three things I'm going to share with you in just a minute about what that entails then if you don't follow through with it which you have a less likelihood that you will, because it's not aligned with really anything you care about other than maybe to win or to show someone else you can or not have someone say I told you so. Then when you don't do it, you experience this decrease in self-esteem and you're less likely to set a goal for yourself in the future. This is how people can easily end up in a state of procrastination or, quote-unquote, laziness. They're not actually lazy. Probably what they've experienced is agreeing to or personally committing and saying, well, I'm going to do this, I'm going to join this challenge, do this thing whatever, and then, when they missed it over and over and over again, they just stopped trying. So then, what does it look like to set goals that you actually want to do, that you're going to be intrinsically motivated and driven to accomplish?
Speaker 1:According to the research, it needs to include three things autonomy, competence and relatedness. If you know anything about psychology, these are the three factors that are the underlying foundation of self-determination theory, and they are also the underlying foundation of self-concordant goals. When we look at these, autonomy means I feel that I am the one in control of what the goal is. I'm choosing it for myself, not because someone else is making me, guilting me, manipulating me, or because I feel like I should, because of shame. I'm doing this because I truly want to do it.
Speaker 1:The second part of it is competence. Do you actually have the ability to do this thing? And so, for example, last year, one of I had two goals. I made two goals for myself in March, and this actually came out of me doing a fitness competition that I failed at horribly and spent a week in utter pits of despair. My self-esteem took a huge hit because, honestly, of what we're talking about, because I had signed up to do something because other people were doing it, because I thought way too highly of myself than I should have, if we're going to be completely honest.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't something. I wasn't training for this fitness competition and doing it because I just truly enjoyed the process of it and just wanted to do it. Whether I won or lost. I was doing it because I wanted to win, which was probably more extrinsically motivated than anything. And so then, when I did it and didn't hit my goal, it devastated me. So I regathered myself and I thought what is it that I truly want to accomplish? What are the things that I want to do Physically as I look forward? What really matters to me more than anything and two years ago I would have said I just want to look good.
Speaker 1:Probably my physical fitness journey was way more vain than actually having a longer-term reason as to why any of these things mattered. And more than that, I would just go to a gym, and I love the gym that I go to. I love the. It's class-based and I love the programming that they do. But I was just following the programming without my own really goals for myself of why I was doing any of the things.
Speaker 1:So last year I went through a pretty intense process of really asking myself why am I doing this at all? Why do I work out at all? Why do I focus on my health and fitness at all? And what I came to terms with and realized was it's actually not about how I look. I care about this because I want to be able to live my life to the fullest for as long as I can. I want to be here and be able to do with the most energy what God has called me to do, as long as I can do it.
Speaker 1:I want to be able to travel when I'm 80 years old. I want to be able to walk up and downstairs. I want to go hiking at 80. I want to be able to put my luggage above me, put it into the bins on an airplane without needing help. These things really matter to me. I want to be mentally aware. I want to be all of those things. A lot of this came from me. Also, listening to Peter Atia, I started doing one of his courses, dr Peter Atia, if you haven't heard of him. He has a really in-depth health podcast called the Drive, which is one of my favorites, along with Andrew Huberman Love just inspirations, for sure, both of them are.
Speaker 1:I took time to really realize that's what matters to me. What I'm intrinsically motivated by in the realm of health and fitness has to do with I want to be healthier. I want to be more cardiovascularly fit, because we know that VO2 max is highly correlated to longevity. I want to run. I want to run faster. I want to have a lower heart rate when I run. I want to be able to run in zone two and continue to bring my VO2 max up. I want to actually have a higher VO2 max, because the higher your VO2 max, it just shows that your body is using oxygen even better. A year ago, if you told me to go run for an hour, I would have said absolutely not.
Speaker 1:When I actually began to realize what I wanted for my future because I was doing it, and what I was actually competent to do, what I had the skills, the ability, all of that to do I began to realize I really want to run, perform better in my video to max, and so what does that look like? It looks like treadmill being on a treadmill, getting my heart rate to sixty, sixty five, seventy seventy five percent for an hour and continuing to up the incline, continuing to up the speed, because the more you do it, the more effective you get at your breathing, and all of that which Makes you be able to do more work in the same amount of time with the same amount of power. And so I began running, I began doing treadmill training, I began doing high intensity interval training with sprints, sprinting at four minutes, and my Is that that is one of my goals. In March of twenty twenty two, I tested Something called a Cooper field test where it's a. It's an easy way for free to do a video to max test about ninety six percent accurate. You run as fast as you can in twelve minutes and you see how far you went. And then there's a chart you can find online that tells you your approximate via two max, based on that for your age group. And I was at I'm in twelve minutes. I ran one point two five miles, so not a great time, about a ten minute pace. I've been diligently working for nine months now on my view on just my zone two training, my view to max training. And four weeks ago so about eight months into it I retested my Cooper field test. Twelve minutes max run, I was at one point four, five miles.
Speaker 1:Do I wake up every day super excited to do my zone two training? No, but I enjoy doing it. And I'm doing it not because someone else is telling me I need to or I have to, because I go into the gym and it's written up on a board although there's nothing wrong with that but I'm doing it because I want to do it. And even when I go into my gym I'm looking at those what exercises on the board and I'm Telling myself I'm here because I want to be and even though there's hard parts of this, this is overall important to my longevity, important to my health in the future and, for now, strength is very important to me as well. So, while it can be hard to do post posterior training, like with my deadlifts and my pull ups, those were another big goal of mine this past year. Those aren't always fun or easy, but I'm doing it because I want to.
Speaker 1:So, autonomy, competency because, honestly, if you set a goal for yourself and you just don't even have the competency. If someone says I'm going to do the seven Efive hard, but you just had a newborn and you're a working mom and you don't have two hours a day that you can do two different workouts, you don't have the competency right now and you're setting yourself up for failure from the beginning. So autonomy, autonomy, competency and then relatedness, and relatedness has to do with is doing this going to connect me to a community that I care about and make me feel like I'm a part of a community? Going to the gym, being a part of a church, even working on work related things or career related things we want to be a part of a community. We aren't meant to do life alone, and so when we work on goals this is part of why accountability partners are incredibly helpful having a support group when you're working towards different goals in your life is incredibly helpful, because it allows you to feel that sense of relatedness, that sense of community. I'm not doing this in isolation. There's other people here for me.
Speaker 1:So if you really want to set goals that matter, then what I encourage you to do is this number one Pick goals that you want to do, not because they're easy, necessarily, but because you genuinely wanna do it. That type of intrinsic motivation is so important and it allows you to be in the driver's seat. It also means that you're going to be setting goals that you set for yourself, not something someone else told you to do. Or you feel shame if you don't do it, or you're feeling guilted into it, or you just feel like it's expected of you from someone else. That's not the best way to set your goals. What is it that you want to do? Who is the person you want to become, and then allow that to inform the goals that you set for yourself. As I said before, there's like one or two parts of the 75 heart I think are decent.
Speaker 1:If you want to diet which I don't think diets should be included in every challenge, because sometimes I just did an episode about this with Dr Mel Davis Sometimes actually a lot of time like our body shouldn't live in diet state. The way of eating that we choose needs to be sustainable throughout our life and at some point that just becomes what we have and what we are. It's not a diet. So stick to a sustainable way of eating and if you want to try and lose weight, then there's a way that you can go about doing that, but pick a way of eating that you want to do, not because someone else has told you to, but because you believe that it's something that you have the ability to do and that you're making the decision to do yourself. That's autonomy, that's competence, and for some people, their way of eating can even relate them to a greater community, like the Paleo diet or the Mediterranean diet or the vegan diet Again, I don't love those words, diets but a lot of those are successful because there's a community of people around them, especially Paleo and vegan. That lends people to have a sense of their identity in that. So think through what makes sense for you that you can sustain.
Speaker 1:The other part of it that I appreciate is if you want to read. I think that we should always be looking and learning to grow in our intellectual attraction, and reading is one way to do that. So I love that you can pick your own book, but that's about the extent of what I love about the 75 Hard. What I believe and what I see in the research is you need to set the goals based on what you want to do, and the framework that I love to use to make that happen is the pies Thinking in the future, five, 10, 20 years from now. Who do I want to be Physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually? And I use that as a framework that I allow to guide the goals that I set for the next year, for the next 12 weeks, for the next month.
Speaker 1:If it's not actually something that's moving me towards the person that I want to be, towards my desired end result, then it's not something I need to do. There's a reason I don't swim. You can tell me all day long about the benefits of swimming and all of those things. I don't love it and I'm not gonna do it. But I will run, or I will go work out or I will read certain books, but there's certain topics I don't want to read books about because guess what? I'm not interested.
Speaker 1:So what I hope that you do this year and through what you've learned in today's podcast, is not feel like you have to do something because you see it on social media or because your best friend is doing it or because someone tells you you should. You should set the goals in your life with intention and with importance, because the goals that you set are promises that you make to yourself and it's important to keep them. And you're more likely to keep those promises to yourself when there are things that actually matter to you, that you want to do. That you understand will make a difference in moving you towards the person that you want to be. So don't set yourself up for failure by just agreeing to do something that you're gonna get two weeks into and you're gonna disengage and you're ultimately gonna feel worse about yourself.
Speaker 1:We know that self-esteem, overall well-being, many other things have a positive increase when you set goals that are self-concordant, that are autonomous, that you set yourself. You have the competency and skill to actually be able to do and that relate you and give you a sense of belonging to a larger purpose or a group of people or community. That is my encouragement to you as you're setting your goals this year. Use those three identifiers or qualifiers as you work through thinking about who you wanna be physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend, leave a review. It's another way that you can help this podcast to reach even more people. And, until next week, stay strong.