Why Weight Loss Deadlines Backfire: 4 Problems With Goals

Nikkiey: What's up, WarriorBabe? Hey, everybody. Nikkiey here, and I am so excited to be here with you guys this week. I've got a fire topic coming your way. I've been dropping hints on my story on Facebook about what I was going to talk about today. I did this over the summer with you guys: there's nothing better than sharing what I'm reading, because it resonates with you.

It resonates with me so much, and then I can share it with you guys, because as I'm reading it, it's popping in my brain. I'm like, oh my God, this is going to help the community. Oh my God, they need to hear this. Oh my God, this is the truth. If you've been a WarriorBabe for a while, you'll recognize it. If this is your first time, welcome. I'm super excited that you guys are here. I've always reiterated this one way or another in my communication style, and I'm going to reiterate it another way, with different verbiage.

It will probably resonate with you differently. I hope so, because it resonated with me differently when reading this. You can never stop learning along your journey. Hopefully you're at a point where this will resonate with you, and if you've heard me say it before, it'll resonate even more. I'm really excited to bring this topic to you tonight. If you're tuning in, go let the Facebook group know that we're getting started.

This call is going to start in just a couple of minutes with today's topic. Honestly, I'm too excited, so I'm going to dive right into it right now. The topic is forgetting about your goals and focusing on your systems instead. I shared this on my story, and I think this is really important because so many women experience this. I actually experienced it tonight on my Blueprint Q&A that I just finished. One of the babes said, I set a goal for this date and I didn't meet it. She was so upset. She was so frustrated.

And I don't set that. She set the goal herself. I don't normally set timeframes unless you're a competitor. That's a different story. You've got a set date, you paid for a show, you've got to show up, and that means you have to pound your body into the ground. But along your fat loss journey, your toning and shaping, building muscle journey, it's never good to set an end-date goal, because then you become attached to it. You create this attachment when really you need to be detached from it.

When you're detached from it, it creates more freedom within yourself to go about the process and the journey and fall in love with it, rather than being attached to, oh my God, am I going to meet this point? Am I going to get to that goal date? Am I going to succeed? And then when you don't, you beat yourself up and you're devastated and you're frustrated. So I want you to forget about your goals and put your focus on your systems instead. That's what matters the most. Goals are great. They're dandy. They're awesome.

But they're about the results you want to achieve. A goal is a result that you want to achieve. The system, what I teach you, the habits I provide you, the skills I share with you, is about the processes that lead to those results. Without the commitment, without the consistency, without the daily habits, without the small wins, you won't get to that goal.

You won't get that result. You have to fall in love with and focus on the systems instead of the goal, because the systems are what's going to lead you to the results, and the result is that goal. So I want to talk about the problems. There's a handful of problems that arise when you spend too much time thinking about your goal and not enough time designing the systems and skills, following them and implementing them.

You have the skills. You have the habits. You have the program. You have the processes at your fingertips that I'm giving you. You have to focus your time on those systems, not all your time thinking about the goals you're accomplishing. So I've got four problems I want to share with you that I see when people focus on a goal and don't focus on the system.

Problem number one is that winners and losers have the same exact goal. Goal setting suffers from a serious case of survivorship bias, meaning we concentrate on the people who end up winning, the survivors, and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success, while overlooking all of the people who had the same objective but didn't succeed.

For example, you've got people who set out for a goal and you see them win it, yet everybody has the same goal of losing weight. Everybody has the same goal of getting toned. You see the people getting there and achieving that success, and then you get mad at yourself because you didn't get there. Well, you don't see the systems those people put into place.

What I'm trying to say is that the successful and the unsuccessful people share the same goals. So the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers. It's not the goal of winning. That goal has always been there. It's only when you get down the system of continuous small improvements that you achieve a different outcome.

So the successful and the unsuccessful people share the same goals, and that goal doesn't differentiate between the winners and the losers. But let me tell you, the winners are the ones who are showing up. The winners are the ones putting in the work. The winners are the ones who are super consistent. The winners are the ones who look at the small wins on a daily basis and make small improvements, and they improve by 1% on a daily basis, which is incremental gains at the end of a year. The losers are the ones who didn't implement that.

They didn't put the systems in place. They didn't implement the systems of continuous small improvements because, let's say, they beat themselves up, and then they go back to doing the same thing they did before they started this journey. Or 14 days in or 21 days in, they're not getting the results, so they resort back to old habits, when really you just have to keep showing up. You have to keep working on the systems first. That's what's going to get you to the goal. That's problem number one. Winners and losers have the same goals, but it comes down to the system of continuous small improvements that they achieve a different outcome,

that you can achieve a different outcome. Problem number two is that achieving a goal is only a momentary change. For example, say you have a messy room and you set a goal to clean it. One day you have all the energy and you clean the room. But if you maintain the same sloppy, pack-rat habits that led to the messy room in the first place, you're soon going to be looking at a new pile of clutter and hoping for another burst of motivation to clean it up.

Do you see what I'm saying? You're left chasing the same outcome because you never changed the system behind it. You treated a symptom without addressing the cause. If you have a messy room and you tidy it up, that's your goal. But if you don't change your cleanliness habits, you're back where you started. It's the same if you have a goal of losing weight, and you have the energy to focus on that goal for a period of time,

and then you reach that goal, and at the end of it you go back to all your old habits. This is a yo-yo pattern. You're left chasing the same outcome because you never changed the system behind it. You have to change the system to get a new outcome. So many people think they need to change their results, but results are not the problem.

So many people focus on, why am I not getting the results? Why am I not getting the results? You all think you have to change the results, but the results are not the problem. What you really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve a problem at the results level, you only solve it temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs, and the outputs will fix themselves. So you need to solve your problems at the systems level.

If you're inconsistent, you're not going to get the result you want. So it's not the results you have to change. You have to change the inconsistency, which will then get you the results. It's not the results. It's the systems you have to change. Fix the input, and the output will fix itself. So that was problem number two: achieving a goal is only a momentary change.

Achieving a goal only changes your life for a moment. You have to change the system. A lot of people reach a goal and then go back to all their old habits. You have to change the habits to create the better outcome, so that you can continuously have results moving forward. Problem number three is that goals restrict your happiness. This is so freaking true. Goals do restrict your happiness.

Like I said, if you set a goal for a date, you're focused on that. A goal creates an either-or conflict. Either you achieve your goal and you're successful, or you fail and you're disappointed. You mentally box yourself into a narrow version of happiness. It's all misguided at that point. And it's unlikely that your actual path to the results you're looking for will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out.

You need to understand why I don't set dates for people: at that date, you may not be there. And it's okay, because it's a journey you're going on that you set out for yourself. It's really unlikely that your actual path to the goal will match the exact journey you had in mind when you set out on that goal. So take on a systems-first mentality. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don't have to wait to

give yourself permission to be happy. Let me say that again. When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don't have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied any time your system is running. You can be satisfied along your entire journey, every single day that you wake up. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you first envisioned. Amen. So problem number three: goals restrict your happiness. Now, number four: goals are at odds with long-term progress.

This is so freaking true. Goals are at odds with long-term progress. A goal-oriented mind creates that yo-yo effect I just talked about. It's just like when people set out to run a marathon. They work hard for months, then they cross the finish line and they stop training. The race is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

Nothing. That's why I don't like setting those dates. When you reach it, you're likely to fall off afterwards, because you've been so attached to it. That's why so many people find themselves reverting back to old habits after accomplishing a goal. That's why I don't like setting an end goal, because it puts you at odds with your long-term progress. It creates a yo-yo effect. The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems, building habits, is to continue playing the game.

True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It's not about any single accomplishment. It's about the cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it is your commitment to the process that will determine your progress. Trust the process. It's your commitment to it that will determine your progress.

Remember, the purpose of goal setting is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. Amen to everything I just said. I hope that hits home for all of you on so many different levels. So those are the four problems. Problem number one: winners and losers have the same goal. But the winners implemented a system of continuous small improvements, so they achieved a different outcome than the losers.

The winners implemented something different, the systems and the habits, than the losers did. Problem number two: achieving a goal is only a momentary change. People think they'll hit this goal and it's going to be a life-changing, amazing thing. Even I fell into that trap, and I gained 25 pounds back after that happened. I thought, oh, my body is going to stay like this forever. No. It's the same thing as cleaning your messy room. If you set out with a goal to lose weight and you get to that goal, but then you gain all the weight back, it's your habits.

It's your habits, not the moment. You don't change your results. The results aren't the problem. What you really need to change are the systems that cause those results. So if it's inconsistency, change that. Problem number three is that goals restrict your happiness. Goals create an either-or conflict. You either achieve it and you're successful, or you fail and you're disappointed. If you have a systems-first mentality and you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don't have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.

Be happy now. And the last one is that goals are at odds with long-term progress. The purpose of goal setting is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game. True long-term thinking is goal-less thinking. It's not about any single accomplishment. It's about this cycle of endless refinement and continuous improvement. Ultimately, it's your commitment to the process that will determine your progress. If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you.

The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. I'm going to leave you on this note: you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems and your habits. Change your habits, you get a different outcome. Change your habits, you get the goal that you want.

Just forget about the goals. Focus on your systems instead. Love you guys. Crush it this week. I'll see you on Wednesday. Bye, everyone.