Affirmations: the hot new thing replacing New Year's goals

Ben Garves Podcast: Fitness, Nutrition, and Activism

We’re not strangers to the concept of ‘goals’. There are so many gurus out there championing the idea of putting your goals down on paper to make them more clear, voicing them out into the universe to make them real, and using them to guide you through your decisions to make them impactful. One of the coolest mantras out there is that the difference between a dream and a goal is action.

Well, here’s a little twist. If you’ve been making goals for the past ten years but you’ve never really made significant progress toward them, I don’t think the creation of the goal is the step that you’re missing. If you want to eat healthier, it’s really easy to say, “in 2022, I’m setting a goal to eat healthier.” You can even be more specific, like, “in 2022, I’m going to make half of all my plates consist only of vegetables.”

Great! But where’s your accountability and emotional support when the universe tests you that first time when your friends want to meet up at a burger place? Or when you know you should get up early to go to the gym in the morning, but your spouse REALLY wants to watch the latest episode of the Sex in the City reboot?

That’s when your affirmations can bring more power to your goals. Saying you want to be a certain way is one thing, but better, deeply-consistent behavior changes don’t come from what you want to be, they come from how you identify the way you are.