Who Do You Want To Be?

I love the start of a new year. It’s so cliche, but I just love the hope and promise that comes with a new year and what’s to come. (As a lifelong Cincinnati Bengals fan, I feel the same way about football season, which has led to a lot of let downs over the years, but I still go into September every year sure that we’ll win the Super Bowl that year. I swear, next season is when we finally do it.)

For many years, I made a list of New Year's Resolutions - I have the Google Docs in my Drive to prove it (because I’m an organized nerd). They mostly revolved around losing weight, working out, and saving money, and ended up being pretty much the same each year if that tells you how well I did at keeping them. But still, I made them. Then 2020 happened, and well, like many others, I gave up on resolutions. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t still reflect on my intentions for the coming year and what I want out of it.

To be honest, I’m still working out my ideas for 2024. But, I started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear as part of a book club at work and was struck by some of the things noted at the start of the book. I’m still working through the book, but wanted to capture a couple things I read so far, as I think the timing is perfect as we move into a new year.

In the book, James Clear notes that in order to achieve greatness, we need to ignore the goal and focus on the system. That long term thinking is goal-less thinking and we need to learn to love the process. I’m paraphrasing here, but as a long-time resolution maker and lover of goals, I really sat with the idea of ignoring the goal. How can we ignore the goal?? Don’t we need goals to achieve great things? 

And then I really thought about my successes over the last couple of years, and I really think they’re largely due to focusing on the system rather than the goal. I have given up on a strict focus on the scale and a specific weight loss or weight, but rather have focused on how I feel and fueling my body with good things and moving my body in a way that feels good. And wow, it’s been so much more sustainable than trying a strict diet for a short period of time, waiting for big results, and then getting frustrated when I didn’t see them and giving up, which is the cycle I followed for so long. And it’s not just sustainable, but effective! I feel better than I ever have, am healthier than I’ve ever been, and I’m not constantly stressed about the scale or eating too many carbs or what my calorie count is for the day.

He also describes identity based habits and focusing on who we want to become rather than what we want to achieve. I even jotted down this quote because it spoke to me so much: “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become”. 

Read that again.

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

So who do you want to be?

Do you want to be the person who makes the same resolution every year to get down to your high school weight? Do you want to be the person who eats fast food in their car for lunch? Or the person who hits snooze instead of getting out of bed to work out?

Or do you want to be the person who genuinely enjoys exercise and moving their body? Someone who actually likes vegetables and knows how to prepare them?

As I was having breakfast a few weeks ago, I came to the realization that I had become the person I envisioned for so many years. I had always wanted to be the girl who worked out in cute clothes, loved to have a smoothie for breakfast, and had a well-defined wellness practice (yes, I’m basic af - this desire probably goes back to my childhood when I hated working out, loved Reese Cups, and more often than not had a JCPenney haircut that made me look like a founding father). That day, I had started my morning by writing in my Five Minute Journal, had just returned home from a pilates class, and was drinking a berry smoothie, all things which I genuinely found joy in (I should also add I was listening to Taylor Swift as well, just exponentially increasing my joy). I was still a sweaty mess, so I missed the cute, put together girl part of it, but some things just can’t be helped.

Without realizing it, I had a vision of who I wanted to be and I slowly became that person. 

For me, the key was finding ways to be that person that I actually enjoyed. For years, I had tried to get into yoga. I went to a bunch of different studios and classes, trying to find one I didn’t hate. I was not successful. No matter what I did, I just hated yoga. Still do. But then one day I decided to try pilates. I thought, maybe that’s something I would actually like. Turns out I love it! I’m still learning and still not great at it, but I show up 3 days a week to class and work on my form and don’t feel that sense of dread like I did with yoga; in fact, I genuinely look forward to class most days.

Same thing with a wellness practice (I’m using this as a broad term for overall emotional and mental wellbeing). I tried meditating many times over the years, and while I don’t hate it like I do yoga, it was just not something I could ever really stick with. Then I found this Five Minute Journal, and it’s just been something easy for me to do to start my day off on the right foot. It helps me practice gratitude and focus positive energy toward my day.

And the smoothie? Well, I was never a big fan of fruit unless it was local and in season (let’s face it - out of season strawberries at the grocery store suck), so smoothies were just not my thing. But I wanted to like them, and it just took trying a recipe I actually liked to get on board with them.

So what’s my point?

My point is that it takes trial and error to find ways to be the person we want to. It’s hard to force becoming someone who does/eats/drinks things we don’t like. So think about the fact that there are different versions of the person you want to be, and it just takes a little experimentation to get to the right one. And the same one may not serve you forever; I’ll be training for the Chicago Marathon later this year and will have to shift my focus from Pilates Mandy to Runner Mandy for that season.

Instead of setting more goals for this year, try visualizing that person you want to be and take steps to get there. Try different things and work towards becoming that version of yourself. And remember that every action is a vote for the person you want to be, so make your vote count.