Become the Person who CAN Achieve Your Goals
Actions come first
We Are What We Repeatedly Do - Aristotle
Many of you likely have some sort of health/fitness goal for 2025.
This is awesome.
In case you missed last week, I’m no News Years hater, I believe in resolutions.
Many people achieve their goals and build a lasting fitness habit each year.
But there are also many who fall off.
The tricky thing is cutting through all the hype and noise that suggest there are quick fixes — that you’re a simple 12 week challenge or bootcamp away from success.
These challenges can serve as a stepping-off point, but if you’re going to make a real transformation to your health and fitness, it must be at the level of identity.
You must become a person who does things that result in being healthy in order to be healthy.
So how can you become that person?
Simple:
By consistently doing things that a healthy person does.
My favorite idea from Atomic Habits is that our actions are votes for the identity we wish to create.
An action that supports your health is a vote for the identity that you ARE a healthy person.
And binge eating ice cream and potato chips is a vote in the other direction.
You might be thinking that this seems too obvious to be worth writing about:
You’re telling me that I have to do healthy things to be healthy - real insightful.
But it actually goes against a lot of mainstream self-improvement content.
There is a big focus on affirmations and cultivating an identity before action.
We hear about BE → DO → HAVE.
This doesn’t work —
In reality it’s:
DO → BE → HAVE.
Actions create your identity — there is no forming an identity without evidence of action.
And the evidence piles up quickly.
If you go to the gym every day this week, you can look back on Sunday and say:
“I went to the gym every day this week.”
And you’re not lying.
So the simple-yet-not-so-easy truth about achieving any fitness goal you may have in 2025 is:
You need to create an identity as a person who prioritizes health and fitness.
You do this by creating an environment and set of permanent actions and habits that support this vision.
Let’s make it more tactical.
Here’s an exercise I give to clients:
Imagine an ideal version of future self.
Write down 3 things that this version of you IS doing that you currently aren’t
And then write down 3 things that your ideal version is NOT doing that you currently are.
Spoiler alert: the NOT to do list is where you should focus initially.
You have to make room for the positive actions before you can do them.
Your biggest obstacle may be a single unhelpful habit that you’re stuck in.
Here’s a quick example —
I had a client who struggled immensely to fit in his workouts.
He was busy — a full time worker and a father.
The only time he could reliably fit in a workout with his schedule was first thing in the am. He’d need to be up by 5 am in order to do it.
This meant he needed to be headed to bed at 10pm at the LATEST.
And this could not be done.
It could not be done because of a habit of staying up too late watching shows.
Shows were his bottleneck.
Take away the late night watching, and it’s possible to get up early and get the workouts in.
Create a vision of the person you want to be.
Break down this person into actions
List 3 actions that they do, and 3 that they avoid
This could be:
To do:
1 hour per week for food prep
3x Full body workouts per week
30 minutes of walking per day
To NOT do:
Ordering junky dinners on Uber Eats
Staying up until 12 scrolling socials
Skipping the gym
Start racking up votes for your ideal self by simply DOING the actions you need to and avoiding what will hold you back.
Observe what factors in your environment get in the way of your success, and make adjustments where you can.
There are no quick fixes.
There is only behavior change.
Hope that was insightful!
- Colin