Ep 23 - Finding a Purpose

The speaker discusses the importance of having a strong purpose and reason for pursuing health and fitness goals, especially during the dark and motivationally challenging months of the year. They recommend having an overarching purpose and breaking it down into smaller goals to maintain focus. They emphasize the need for a strong sense of purpose to stay motivated and consistent, and suggest signing up for events or setting meaningful goals as ways to find that purpose. The speaker also mentions the importance of having a reason why to overcome moments of low motivation. Overall, they stress the significance of having a strong purpose to achieve long-term progress in health and fitness. Hello and welcome guys to episode number 23 of the Progress Pod. I feel by now I should be getting some sort of intro music coming on but I've not got around to that yet. But regardless hopefully you can still take some value and it's just going to be me today. We've had a good few guests on over the last few episodes and it's going to be me solo over the next couple. We've got another few guests lined up over the next few weeks but this week and next week will be a solo effort from me. So today's episode I want to talk all about purpose and your reason why as I feel especially at this time of year as I'm recording this at the beginning of November. The dark nights are here, the days are shorter, this is a period of time where motivation tends to dip, energy dips, people's mood dips. So if you've not got a strong purpose and a strong why you're going to find it very very difficult to especially stick to your health and fitness goals because we'll be focusing this in and around your purpose behind health and fitness rather than anything else. So yeah with regards to purpose you can have a sort of higher over option purpose which I would advise everybody has and then sort of break that down into smaller goals and smaller current focuses which then just adds that extra layer. So what I mean by that is for me my sort of higher purpose for taking care of myself health and fitness wise is my family. I want to be a good example to my kids. I want to be fit and healthy for as long as I possibly can. Spend as much time as I possibly can with them and also that's my livelihood as well so that's a big purpose for me in terms of I need to stay fit and healthy like I'm leading people. I'm trying to be an inspiration to a number of people around health and fitness so that for me is a strong purpose as to why I need to make sure I'm looking after myself. So again these are maybe the higher over option reasons in terms of for me key purposes and why I want to be focusing and working hard on health and fitness and then below that I can then be like right okay what's my current focus so what have I got right now that's driving me. So my next event that I've got booked up is Hyrox in March and I want to be sure up to that and as best physical possible condition I can be in. As fit as I can be, as strong as I can be, as fast as I can be and I've got that focus there so that's another layer. So as I said not only have I got the over action purpose that's the kind of wider reason why I'm doing it then I've also got that next focus in terms of yeah I don't want to show up to that not at my best. So it's just about making sure that we have a purpose and a goal that we can focus on that's that's approaching. If we don't have that then we're really going to struggle as I said in terms of ticking the boxes, staying consistent and actually seeing that progress because if you've not really got a strong purpose or you haven't thought about it and you're lying in your bed, your alarm goes at five in the morning if you want to get to the gym at six, you look outside the rain is pelting off the window, it's pitch black, it's freezing, you're literally going to roll back over and go to sleep and say you're going to go tomorrow. There's no way you're going to have that reason and purpose to jump out of bed and get to work. It's really really important, it's important at all times of the year but especially at this time of year if you've not got a strong focus, a strong goal, something you're working towards then we're going to be struggling. It's why inside the progress project we've created a sort of mini goal where you project pigs in blankets so that people can be focusing on over from now till Christmas. They've got they've all set a really strong meaningful goal that we really want to hit and a target and we're going to be working towards that and that's what's going to be getting them out of bed each morning to make sure that we're ticking the boxes because we've got that focus there and it's just so so important that we have it and if as I said if you don't then you're not going to see any change, you're not going to make the progress, you're constantly going to be waiting on motivation and you're going to be up and down and motivation doesn't tend to randomly appear in the middle of November. There's obviously got the usual kind of motivation spikes throughout the year which is January then you've got kind of just before summer and summer holidays approaching so there's a kind of seasonal spikes in motivation. Mid-November is not really one of them so if you're relying on motivation then you're not really going to get very far over the next couple of months and without the purpose you're not going to have the motivation. If you've not got a reason to strive to get better to you've not got a focus or a goal you're working towards then where's the motivation coming from so you're going to if you're not with that purpose you're going to constantly be on and off it like a wheel work hard for a while when motivation's high drop back off, work hard for a while when motivation's high drop back off and it's just going to be that constant cycle and as I said you're never going to make any long-term lasting progress. You need to really be consistent with it and you need to try and find that strong purpose. If you've not got one or like you can't think of one right now get to work and try and think of one or even sign up for an event that's going to push you out your comfort zone and going to really challenge you so you've got that focus there because you need it like we all need a strong sense of purpose to get us going to get us motivated to get us focused and to get us pushing on and there's that saying that if you have a strong enough why you'll work out the how so I said there's going to be times where like nobody can be bothered all the time I cannot be bothered all the time sometimes when my alarm goes at four to five in the morning to get up to go and do stretching and then to go to the gym and do a big conditioning session like there's times where I'm like I really just want to go back to sleep like everybody's going to get that regardless of who you speak to but as I said you just revert back if I'm lying in my bed and I'm just like right I'm going to roll over I just think and go first and foremost actually this isn't going to get me to being the fittest version of me if I just lie here like I'm not going to show up at my next event is the way I want to and also I'm not living towards my values and my higher purpose of leading by example being as fit as I possibly can be so I just think about that and that just gets me up and gets me out of bed and that's it and the reason I say to have an overarching purpose is because that's always there so you've always got that reason to rely on you might not have enough an event coming up or whatever but that overarching purpose is always there so you can always think of that so you can't think of something right now that you're really focused on firstly get something whether it doesn't need to be a high rocks or a marathon or whatever it could be anything it could be a holiday that you've got coming up it could be a wedding it could just be a Christmas time it could be anything at all but make sure you've got it and make sure it means something to you there's no point in just picking a goal that doesn't mean something to you because then it's not going to have that purpose you're not going to have that focus if you're just picking a goal out there like it doesn't really matter to you that's just that's pointless as well because if it doesn't matter to you if it's not strong enough then it's not going to work so when I'm speaking about this in terms of purpose make sure it's strong make sure it's important to you and that's going to give you that reason why because as I said found it especially this time of year we're going to end up not making any progress waiting for that motivation spike in January and that is not the way to make long-term consistent progress so yeah hopefully this is useful guys with the solo episodes I'm going to just keep them kind of short short and sweet to the point just actionable steps so you guys can just listen to it on your walk take it in and the longer episodes for when we've got guests on the show so yeah I've got a good few guests lined up which I'm really looking forward to coming up but if there's any topics you want covered anything any guests you want on make sure to give me a shout and I'll do what I can and similarly if you have listened to this then make sure to share in your stories let us know you found it tag somebody that would benefit from listening to it but yeah make sure guys that we've got a strong focus strong purpose something to work towards and that's going to allow us just to continue to make progress year-round regardless if it's pitch black freezing outside regardless of mood motivations dipping we're going to have that purpose and we're going to keep making progress all right guys we'll speak to you on the next one