With each new season comes a symbolic sense of new beginnings, an opportunity to change things up and do things ‘better’. As we move into fall, I encourage you to evaluate and adjust your fitness mindset.
Your fitness mindset is different than specific goals you set. It’s about how you think and feel about your goals. It’s why you set your goals. And it’s what helps you define your fitness pledge.
Cover photo: Me last month on West Glacier Trail, Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska. Goal? Quality of hike, not hair. (Goal achieved and the hike was beautiful.)
Fitness Goals versus Fitness Pledge
I’ve written about the difference fitness goals and pledges before. It’s a concept worth revisiting, particularly as we enter a new season of fitness.
Pledges are long-term. A very general pledge would be, “I want to stay strong and healthy.” In comparison, a goal is something more along the lines of:
“I want to get in shape for ski season by November 15.”
“I want to lose ten pounds by Thanksgiving.”
“I want to do a one-minute plank every day between now and the end of the year.”
Goals are based on what you want. They have a start and end point. Even if you’d like to stay in shape long after ski season is over, keep that ten pounds off, or get stronger by planking regularly, goals only take you so far.
What’s Good About Goals
Goals are (mostly) awesome. They can be great motivators and generate tremendous feelings of accomplishment. They can power us through an entire season.
Of course, we don’t always achieve our goals. Sometimes life gets in the way and sometimes our goals are unrealistic. In spite of our failures though, and perhaps because of them, we learn and achieve and gain a lot from goal setting. We go on to set more goals. But we rarely look at the big whole life picture. The pledge that arises from our mindset.
How a Pledge is Different
Twyla Tharp, an award-winning choreographer, asks us to consider our fitness goals in the context of our fitness pledge.
If you can mark it as “done”, it’s a goal. Not so with a pledge. Whatever you decide to pledge, it is essential that you are striving to reach it, always trying to refine, hone, and improve your choices to better fulfill it.
Twyla Tharp, Keep It Moving
Your Pledge
I think you and I already have pledges. We may not be able to articulate them well, but we have them. A pledge is very personal and changes as you grow and, yes, age. If you approach life well, your pledge becomes more lucid and stronger as you get older.
A pledge comes into clearer focus over the course of your life – it shows itself not rigid but bending with a momentum powerful enough to dictate what the next day will be.
Twyla Tharp, Keep It Moving
A pledge goes beyond your fitness goals. Ideally, it recognizes that staying fit for the long haul has a tendency to positively impact all other aspects of our lives.
My pledge is a mindset of always learning, being creative, staying strong and fit, seeking optimism, and always persevering. Goals are the tools that help me work to foster that mindset.
Approaching short-term goals, including fitness goals, as part of a long-term pledge just might help me and you define our lives better and move forward with more purpose.
Making It Work
Here’s the cool thing about fitness. You can always change what you’re doing. There’s no shortage of resources for all levels of fitness and all types of interests that can be used at home, in a gym, or basically wherever you want. At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with continuing to embrace your old favorites for the strength, power, endurance, flexibility, relaxation, or general sense of wellness they give you.
Unless you’re a professional athlete, the only one who should be making fitness demands on you is you. Wrap your head around your fitness mindset – your pledge – and move forward with the goals you want to achieve.
Stay fit!
