You’re Doing it Wrong: How to Improve Your Ability to Set the RIGHT Goals

Paul Salter:

Have you ever given any thought to the most common emotional state that you have set a weight, health, or exercise goal out of? Don’t worry. I’ve done all the thinking and reflecting for you. The most common emotional and energetic state that we set any type of health goal out of is a combination of feeling a sense of lack, scarcity, and fear.

If you feel like you know exactly what to do to lose the weight and keep it off, but are struggling to do so, you’re in the right place. Welcome to The 5% Way podcast, where myself, registered dietician Paul Salter and my co-host, sustainable weight loss specialist Micheala Barsotti have an impactful conversation focused on helping you uncover the root cause of the self-sabotaging behaviors holding you back from achieving sustainable weight loss.

Your transformation begins from the inside out, and our purpose is to accelerate that progress by sharing practical strategies and need-to-know information to help you reclaim your confidence, control, and inner calm so that you can feel, look, and be your best.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of The 5% Way Podcast. I am your host and registered dietician Paul Salter. And as I shared with you just last week, remember at the turn of the year, we’re going back to our roots, rechanging the name yet again, back to Screw the Scale Radio. And I cannot wait to kick off the new year with a freaking bang, committed to two guests every single month, bringing you a variety of topics when it comes to mindset, positive psychology, behavior change and habit formation, relationships, deep inner work, doing inner child healing, and so much more that is ultimately aimed at helping you not only achieve your weight loss goal and keeping that weight off for good, but empowering you with the education, the tools, and strategies you need to feel and look your best.

I appreciate you tuning in today. And before I dive into today’s messaging, I can’t help but notice in bright red font on the whiteboard located above my desk, where I’m recording this wonderful episode in my office on a fairly chilly Florida morning. The quote that stands out to me, that always grabs my attention, that it can never be repeated enough is simply as follows. You can’t change unless you change.

As I alluded to in the beginning of this episode, so many people make the mistake when it comes to setting a health related goal, a goal of losing weight, exercising more, meal prepping, whatever it may be. They make the mistake of doing so in times of quiet desperation, where they’re operating from a place of either lack, scarcity, or fear.

And this turns out to be an incredibly problematic set of action steps, not only because it helps you set the wrong type of goal, but more importantly, it is setting goals and setting intentions from this type of emotional state that leads to you taking irrational action steps, making rash decisions that ultimately lead to short-term results and long-term both headache and heartache, maybe even potentially taking one step forward and three gigantic steps back.

But hey, you’re a human being. You’re full of emotions, and you probably operate on both ends of the emotional spectrum in a given day, let alone maybe a given hour or minute. And that’s the beautiful thing, because emotion literally just means energy in motion. And these emotions, they’re fluid. They’re always moving, changing, moving all throughout the body, and they come and go.

But we’ve all been there before, where we’re feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. We have tightness in our chest, knots in our stomach, our head is pounding, our ears are ringing. And in quiet desperation, we have all but lost every ounce of hope and faith in ourselves, desperately craving, looking for some type of immediate solution to absolve the pain emotionally, physically, or mentally that we are experiencing on a daily basis. And it’s during the time of our greatest pain that we become so desperate to make the pain stop that whatever goal somewhat resembles something of a solution, we attach all of, and it’s not a lot, but all of the emotion or energy we have left at that point that we can muster. We latch it onto that goal and we seek out the quickest way to relieve the pain, the desperation, the overwhelm, the anxiety, the hurt, the anger, the depression. We seek the quickest way to relieve those feelings.

And when it comes to any type of health or, particularly, for our purposes today, weight loss related goal, this is the primary catalyst behind why you have found yourself trapped in a pattern of diet hopping every couple months, choosing this fad diet, doing what your friend, neighbor, or coworker is doing, and never actually taking a sustainable approach that truly addresses the root origin of the problems you are facing.

When we make decisions operating from a place of lack, of fear, of scarcity, these low vibrational energy emotional states, they cause us to lean very heavily on our emotional brain. We turn up the volume on the emotional component of our brain and turn down the volume on the logical, rational, decision-making component of our brain, which means, as I mentioned earlier, we are far more likely to take irrational action and make rash decisions that lead to us taking one quick step forward, but two, maybe three large steps backwards.

And instead, this is a very timely episode, given the time of year it’s being published, mid-December, before the turn of the year, where we are all most likely to set these big audacious goals for ourselves as we head into the new year. One of the biggest favors you can do for yourself, one of the biggest gifts that you can give yourself as you prepare and ready yourself to take massive fucking action in the new year is learning how to set a goal from a positive emotional and energetic state.

You see, when we are operating at these high vibrational frequencies, states of joy, excitement, hope, positivity, inspiration, confidence, dreaming, not desperately wishing, desiring, not just kind of sort of wanting, when that happens, we turn down the volume of our emotional brain, turn up the volume of our rational, logical, great decision-making brain, and we’re better able with the utmost clarity and patience to set a powerful, clear goal alongside the appropriate, most effective and efficient action steps to actually achieve that goal.

And what I want to offer you here in the next couple of minutes today, as you begin to not only reflect back on all the times you’ve set a health or a weight loss goal from a place of quiet desperation, hopelessness, isolation, frustration, and desperation, and everything in between, I want to offer you a priming practice to better cultivate a state of those higher vibrational frequencies, those high vibrational energy states, those emotions of positivity, inspiration, hope, joy, confident, desiring, not just merely wanting. I want to prime you for that so you can get your emotion and energy where it needs to be, so you can set a clear goal for yourself, one that is truly in line with how you want to feel, not the number on the scale, not the number on the tag on the back of your clothes, not even the number on your bank account.

Get really fucking clear on how you want to feel. Confident, strong, sexy, healthy, alive, energized. And when you have that clarity, you’re best able to reverse engineer and identify the most appropriate and effective action steps to bring those feelings to fruition stat, not after you reach some arbitrary metric or goal.

And that priming process looks like the following. When it’s time to sit down in your quiet place, your place of solitude, silence, and stillness with your big ass mug of coffee, which is an absolute necessity to goal setting by the way, and you’re ready to just sit there and reflect and dream and ideate and create the future, you remember life is not about finding yourself. It is about creating yourself.

Here is how I suggest you prime yourself to begin this exciting dream state endeavor. Number one, you set a timer on your phone for three minutes and you emotionally vomit everything you are currently grateful for in your life. Gratitude is such a powerful emotion, and it is an expansive emotion. That high vibrational state really opens you up to this abundant state of being abundant state of mind, which is a beautiful place to spend more of your time.

So a three minute timer, getting out everything on a piece of paper you are currently grateful for, followed by then setting a one minute timer and writing down an endless list, as many things as you can in 60 seconds, that you love about yourself. Self-love, self-compassion is such an additionally powerful way to flood yourself with abundance and high vibrational frequencies, energies, and emotions to best clear your head and your heart to setting an appropriate goal that is in line with how you want to feel, and then giving you the clarity and peace of mind to choose the most appropriate action steps to make it happen.

So I challenge you, as this episode comes to a conclusion, be more aware of your emotional and energetic state when you are setting goals. Check yourself. Did you choose that goal, did you make that promise to yourself out of desperation, out of lack, fear, or scarcity? And if so, remember that you’re human. That is completely necessary. But go back and revise it. Go use the priming exercises I just shared with you. Within four minutes, you will be primed with a state of mind, a state of heart of abundance and openness and clarity. And ultimately, that will allow you to set the best goal and the best set of action steps to truly help you feel how you both desire and deserve to feel.

If you found value in today’s episode, it would mean the world to me if you not only share it with a friend, but you leave a genuine, honest rating and review on Apple Podcast or wherever it is you are listening to the show. I just sincerely appreciate you being here. And if you haven’t already done so, connect with me on Instagram at Paul Salter Coaching. Say hi. I would love to meet you, love to hear what you’re enjoying about the show. But until then, thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and screw that fucking scale.