MAKING EVERY DAY MATTER - From Habits to Goals to Purpose
INTRODUCTION
“Over the span of moments that make up a lifetime, these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.”
When talking about our daily habits, we all face a small paradox. On the one hand, how we choose to act today doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things; our life will not be affected by just one day. On the other hand, one action can influence the next, and the next again, forming habits that will have a butterfly effect and an enormous impact in our lives down the line. Those same actions that don’t matter in isolation will determine our body shape, career success or lack thereof, health condition, relationship status, etc. Our sense of identity will be tied to what we repeatedly do—the dividing line between smoking a cigarette and BEING a smoker, having a lazy day or BEING lazy.
Our habits can be particularly stubborn to break, partly because most of our habits act on the unconscious level. Cultivating good habits is like tending the plants in a garden; those habits will grow and develop, whether we take care of them or not. If we don’t consciously guide the growth of the ones we want, we will find our garden invaded by vines. Our habits will always tend to maximize immediate gains over longevity. That is why we need clear goals to guide and mold our habits into what we want. If we don’t have a clear sense of direction, we might pick up habits here and there that we think are “good” but that have little to no relevance in our lives, and such habits rarely stick with us for long. Without having a strong why behind our habits, we will just as easily forget them when we grow bored with them and the initial gratification has passed.
Our goals will have a big impact on our habits, which in turn will determine whether we reach said goals or not. The goal is the needle that stitches together and aligns our daily actions and choices with something that matters a lot to us. It gives each day and each choice purpose and meaning. The stronger the link between these components, the more fulfilling, effective, and meaningful our days will be.
Let’s start from the bottom of the pyramid.
THE SCIENCE OF HABITS
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
There are some things that only a salivating dog can teach us about learning. Back at the end of the XIX century, the physiologist Ivan Pavlov, while studying dogs’ digestive system, noticed a curious thing (coincidence insight?): it is quite normal for a dog to salivate when it sees food (especially if that’s delicious meat), but it’s a bit unusual to see the dog salivating when he just sees the person who delivers the meat, even if that person doesn’t have meat with him at the moment.
So he decided to set up an experiment. To follow it, we put on the table three key variables: an unconditioned stimulus, a neutral stimulus, and a conditioned stimulus. An unconditioned stimulus is innate to each of us and will solicit an unconditioned response. In this example, it is a dog salivating over a piece of meat. Nobody has to train a dog that meat is good food, and salivating prepares dogs to eat and digest food. The second variable, the neutral stimulus, is something that at the beginning of the experiment leaves us indifferent. In this case, it was the ringing of a bell. An untrained dog doesn’t know what a ringing bell means. What Pavlov did was simply the following: during a certain period, he rang the bell every time food was about to be presented. This had no obvious response from the dogs until the food followed, and then the dogs started salivating. With enough repetition, his dogs were trained to make the association of the ringing bell and the food. Even when no food was presented, simply ringing the bell was enough to make the dogs salivate. The dogs began to associate the bell with food; they were preparing for it. The stimulus of the bell, originally neutral, became a conditioned stimulus attached to the unconditioned stimulus of getting food, evoking the final conditioned response of salivation.
What does this all mean for you and me?
THE HABIT LOOP
“Habits are powerful factors in our lives. They constantly, daily, express our character, and produce our effectiveness... or ineffectiveness.”
Humans are scavengers; we are built to always be on the lookout for opportunities. When we discover something that we like or that makes us feel better, our brain highlights it so we remember it in the future. If we find ourselves in the same situation again, we will try to replicate the same actions that made us feel good the last time, anticipating the rewards it will bring. Repeat this process enough times, and you’ve got yourself a habit loop. Every habit is built on four components: a cue, a craving, a routine, and the reward.
The cue is an internal or external stimulus that kickstarts the process. It can be based on almost anything—a particular object, a place, a certain time of day, a feeling, a person, a smell. Our brain functions on a basic level on the lookout for cues. Once we have a habit in place and we recognize (consciously or unconsciously) our cue, knowing that there is a reward soon to come, we start anticipating the feeling of getting our reward, which gives us a craving that pushes us to act.
We can have two main types of craving—a “cue” craving or a physical craving. If we take the classic example of smoking, a cue craving can be a certain time of day or seeing your co-worker go out for a cigarette. The physical craving can be the lack of nicotine in your body sending a signal to the brain: “Time for a break!” Once the craving has taken hold, following the routine is the easiest way to make it go away for a while, and so we move to the next step.
The routine is the core of the habit loop; all the other parts (cue, craving, reward) are in place just to push us to follow the routine. It is what we actually DO in the habit. The routine doesn’t have to be physical—it can also be mental: following a certain thought pattern, looking for distractions. Or the routine can be emotional: getting angry at catching another red light, seeing someone we dislike, feeling worthless when we fail at something, or check other people’s amazing lives on social media. We can get addicted to our emotions.
Once we’ve fulfilled the routine, we finally get our reward. This can take any form, and with each person, the same routine can result in a different reward. For you, going out for a drink on Friday night may be the way to feel the buzz of alcohol in your system and numb the feelings of a bad week or the reward of being sociable and spending time with your friends. Working out can reward you by feeling more energized and healthy, meeting your mates at the gym, just looking better in the mirror, or all of the above.
This is the basic version of our habits, but our bodies and brains are constantly adapting and shaping themselves to match whatever we are doing. This means that our reward system changes and evolves over time. The first time we get the reward, we feel a big surge of satisfaction, but as we get accustomed to the stimulus and start anticipating it more and more, our reward slowly alters. This can have a couple of consequences. To begin with, it can lead to addiction—we start repeating the behavior more often or in greater quantity to recapture the same effect we felt the first time. This adaptability has another consequence. As the habit becomes integrated into our system and part of our life, it transforms from giving you something positive to merely removing negative stimuli. In other words, while in the beginning, we felt ok and the new reward gave us something better, now we may feel that we need the reward in order to feel ok.
Our cravings grow stronger as we unintentionally numb ourselves to feeling the results. If we don’t check our habits now and then, they may eventually grow into more or less severe addictions, but if we craft our habits purposefully, the same system can be made to work for us, making us faster, stronger, and able to take on bigger challenges.
CREATING NEW HABITS
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Our habits are so slippery to manage because most of them act outside our conscious awareness, and for good reason. If we had to consciously decide what to do at every moment of every single day, we would be exhausted before the day even starts. We can’t start making changes to the habit loop until we are able to momentarily detach ourselves from our automatic behaviors and get a new perspective. This is when we develop self-awareness. The small gap between a stimulus and our response to it is the space where our power to choose lies. We can’t really control the cues and our feelings of craving directly because they act at a much lower level than our conscious awareness, but as long as we are aware of them, we can always choose what we’re gonna do next. Instead of being a victim of our cravings, we can step outside of the loop and analyze the feeling, question it. Because we can’t control the cues or cravings, it is a lot easier to replace our routine than to just remove or replace entire habit loops. With that awareness in our favor, we can decide beforehand what we are gonna do whenever that craving arises, and choose our new routine and our new reward.
A couple of things that are useful to keep in mind:
- When we create a new habit, it is always better to start small and be consistent. Repetition is what builds a new habit more than the load of the session. Make it impossible to fail; let the small wins build up momentum and motivate you. To do that, make the routine so easy to accomplish that it doesn’t tax your system. Or in the alternative, you can also raise the price of failing. Make it harder to follow the old behavior and easier to follow the new one.
- Beware of stress. The prefrontal cortex is the home of our consciousness, and it is the first system to shut down in stressful moments. With our better judgment gone, we easily revert back to a more animal and raw state and lose our clarity. AA teaches that everybody can easily stop drinking... until they have a bad day.
- As insignificant as making small changes can be, developing even a simple habit can have a cascade effect, building up confidence and making the bigger challenges feel less out of reach.
We are always creating, replacing, and reinforcing new habits, whether we are conscious of it or not. They will develop or fall as our life and circumstances change; some will be temporary while others last a lifetime. How do we decide what’s a good habit to have right now? With all the good and bad habits a person can cultivate, our personal goals will show us more clearly which ones are relevant to us, at least in the medium to long term.
SET UP CLEAR GOALS…
“In every moment of your life, your skills are growing. The question is, in which direction?”
Knowing your destination is the essential first element of any successful journey, as it influences everything we do to get there. Having a solid goal-setting technique is therefore a good tool to have in our arsenal. Even just taking the time to write down your goal can force you to mentally elaborate on how to get there. Goals can be divided into smaller goals and even smaller goals, if necessary. Although we can have daily goals, for the sake of this topic I’ll refer to goals as medium to long term (weeks, months, or years). You’ve probably already bumped into the theory of SMART goals somewhere, but let me share it with you in case you didn’t.
SMART GOALS
- Specific: Generic goals are hardly exciting; they usually remain in a foggy vision of the future as we don’t know exactly what we should be doing to reach them. The more specific we set our goals, the better we’ll be at finding the best way to get there. We’re already filled with so much noise that not knowing where you’re going will easily get you lost as you chase every new distraction that crosses your path. Getting healthy is too broad, as there are so many things that influence health we wouldn’t know where to start. Losing weight sounds a bit better, being able to run a marathon even better, and so on.
- Measurable: Having a way to measure our progress is a good motivator by itself. We can also see how fast we are moving, and it serves as immediate feedback if something is off. This might be tricky for some goals though, as sometimes we need to take a step back before we move forward. The same is true if we put our objective into unknown territory or in doing something new, as we lack the knowledge and experience to know how we are doing. In these cases, we can make use of mentors or more experienced people for feedback, as they’ve walked the path already.
- Attainable: This factor is pretty self-evident. If we set an impossible goal we will be left with frustration and a good dose of disappointment. You have to consider your resources and abilities at the moment. Attainable doesn’t mean necessarily easy. The line between what you know can do and what might be possible is often blurred and sitting right at the edge of your comfort zone. If you want the extra buzz, give yourself the chance to fail at reaching your goal. That is one way to keep you honest and accountable in your efforts.
- Relevant: For a goal to be valuable, it must fit the overall circumstances. It has to fit into a bigger picture, whether it be your career, family, personal life, etc… Sprinting in the wrong direction can be worse than not moving at all, and as we pour our energies into one part of our life, inevitably the others will suffer. Our time and energies are limited, and we are always making compromises.
- Time-bound: Deadlines are a powerful tool to keep you on track. When you set a realistic but challenging deadline, you will see the importance of each day and the opportunities it offers. The clock is ticking, and time waits for no one.
New ambitious goals will most likely require developing new skills. We develop skills by building practices. We build each practice by integrating it into our routines; this is where our habits come into play. Each little practice builds on other practices and on itself.
Let’s focus a bit on those.
… AND FORGET ABOUT THEM
“My results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed.”
Even though setting good goals can make us start with the best intentions, at a certain point, and at a more practical level, they remain pretty useless. Setting a goal has very little to do with actually achieving it. Setting goals and plans have the insidious effect of making us feel like we’ve progressed, and we feel good about it without much effort.
When we start actually taking actions, all that enthusiasm usually dwindles as the task at hand becomes harder than expected, boring, monotonous, and new unforeseen problems arise. Too many projects are born and die in the planning phase. Even if we commit and follow through, we are not guaranteed of reaching our goal. Remember that in sports both the winning and the losing team shared the same goal: winning. So what makes the difference between the two? For the most part, it’s consistent quality actions. The actions you take, the habits you form are what move you closer to your objective. This is especially true if your goals require months or years to accomplish.
FOCUS ON THE PROCESS
Putting too much stress on results can be counterproductive and nerve-wracking. Results always have a component that is external to us; they are always to some degree outside our control. We can make a beautiful painting, but we can’t control whether people will like it; we can play a great game, but we can’t control whether we are gonna win. We can instead focus on the process, on doing just this piece with focus and intention, and thereby have a greater chance of influencing the outcome. The result will be nothing less than the sum of our efforts during the process. The result is passive—the process is active. The quality of our product will be the result of the consistency and quality of our actions.
Consistency: This is why creating solid habits is important. Once a habit becomes integrated into our schedule and/or identity, it will withstand the pressure from other forces, often with the habit becoming an end in itself. But there are going to be good days and bad days. Our energy and motivation will fluctuate—that’s inevitable. Sometimes you reach your daily goals, sometimes you fall short, and sometimes you even realize that you’re actually climbing the wrong mountain. What makes the major difference is not that you get it perfect every day but that you consistently show up.
Quality: Quality actions reflect focus and intention. Actions always take form in the continually evolving and shifting present, so in the here and now is where we should be (Flow State). Focusing too much on results and goals has the side effect of bringing the future to mind, and as such, we will inevitably be distracted in the present. If we’re rushing to reach the goal, our actions will be done poorly and in an anxious state, delivering poor results as a consequence. If we are present in our task, we will give it the best energy we have. That said, it’s good to revisit your goals now and then to be sure that you are on the right track. Perfectionism can become the other side of the same problem, focusing too much on the details can lead you off track and preventing you from getting things done.
Congratulations! We’ve now reached the top of our mountain. When we finally achieve our big goal, after the joy of achievement has passed and maybe we’ve settled into our new life, inevitably for most of us, a question will pop into our head: What now? Much like Sisyphus pushing his rock, behind every goal, there is only another—possibly bigger—goal. The quest for bigger and better can become soulless. If we define ourselves based only on outcomes or something external, we may eventually realize that after the day of glory, when the great feelings fade and another day begins, we are still the same person, but we’ve just lost our driving goal.
Having an internal sense of purpose will guide us in the transitions of setting goals. We’ve analyzed the what and the how, but we left out the big why. Let’s move a bit further upstream to get the full picture.
THE POWER OF PURPOSE
REDEFINING THE SELF
“After my baseball career ended, I struggled to find myself. When you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and that disappears, who are you now?”
They often say that a sports star dies twice, the first time at retirement. The life of many elite athletes, since their early years, revolves around creating goals and setting routines. They live in a highly regimented environment in which coaches or associations make decisions on their daily training routines, schedules, and diet plan. As their career develops and their goals become more ambitious, more energy is required for sport, and life outside it is affected. The longer hours for training and travel to competitions come with a price: sacrifices are made that limit formal education, relationships, and family time.
This level of discipline and dedication grows and evolves over time and feeds off their love of the sport as their identity becomes inseparable from their athletic abilities. When your daily decisions—from what you eat to how and when you sleep—revolve around sport, it’s hard to see yourself as anybody else but a competitor. Because sport is so physically focused, no matter how good or bad, how long or short the career, inevitably the body will age and slow down. No longer able to keep up with the demands of the schedule and falling off the performance curve, retirement remains the only option. With the abrupt transition this brings (sometimes from one day to the next), many athletes go through a very vulnerable period. With their schedule, routines, and high-intensity lifestyle suddenly gone, they find themselves lost. All they have known until now and all their efforts were in the service of athletic performance. Now their lives have no clear direction. As their self-identity as an athlete suddenly collapses and must be replaced, many of them fall victim to a period of depression, addictions, and financial issues—the worst cases leading to suicide attempts.
It’s hard to imagine how a person that can be so disciplined can have such a drastic change in such a short time, but when we lose our “why,” we lose most of our motivation and drive. Luckily, in other cases, retired athletes continue to have a bright future in a different career path after sport, sometimes related to the same sport, bringing their discipline and dedication into the service of a different mission. The same type of experience is present in parents when their children are grown and independent enough to leave the nest, and their identity as caregivers takes a hit. In both cases, the person loses the sense of purpose in their days, and it must be recreated.
THE TRAP OF FREE WILL
“Until thought is linked with purpose, there is no intelligent accomplishment.”
Most of the animal realm is largely driven by basic cravings and instincts that tell them when to eat, sleep, or mate. We humans, as far as we know, are the only species to develop a sense of consciousness that can be directed to our own internal experiences, and with a brain that can turn inward and watch itself in action, making us aware of our own awareness, to be self-aware.
While other animals live in a state of “being” simply doing what their instincts tell them, we can choose to use our awareness to question our own instincts and override them, when necessary. This possibility of choosing our actions is what ultimately gives us free will, but it comes with its own costs. Unable to completely rely on our instincts and with our basic needs for food and shelter already covered, we often fail to find a sense of direction and meaning to our existence, leaving an emptiness that is hard to fill. What we lack is a purpose—something that is worth dedicating our time and energy to. Developing or discovering a big sense of purpose in our life will give each smaller goal meaning, building internal motivation, clear priorities, and values.
Although this big purpose is different for each individual and has to take into account our history and unique set of skills, it can be defined by three main components:
- It is a goal. It is the ultimate, far into the horizon, life-long goal. It might not be reachable in our lifetime, but it’s the direction we will follow, and it defines our smaller goals.
- It is meaningful. It matters to you personally, and the driving force to pursue it comes from within, not an external reward. This intrinsic drive is what makes people live through hardships and setbacks along the way. When hard times come, purpose-filled people turn inward and try to reconnect with a bigger why instead of looking outward for pleasure and distractions.
- It is bigger than you. It is something that will leave a mark in the world beyond yourself; big or small as your world may be, it will make a difference that you have lived. This sense of devotion to something bigger lays out a different path for each of us. It may be aimed toward our craft, our children, our community, the environment, the divine…
In his speech, “I have a dream...”, Martin Luther King Jr. expressed his purpose quite clearly. His goal was clear, it was meaningful to him, and it was bigger than him. When we align our actions to what matters most to us, there can be enormous power behind every individual. To be fair and a bit controversial, having a purpose doesn’t necessarily mean doing what others consider “good.” Adolf Hitler also had a clear goal that was meaningful to him and bigger than him, and he also dedicated himself to it. Both men did accomplish big things though, in their own ways.
When we put intention behind our practice of any skill, we get better; mindlessly repeating the same thing will not produce many results. The same applies to our overall life—purpose gives us that intention. If we can’t find something out there that is more important than us, we will easily fall back into our basic animal cravings and the neurotic triad of depression, aggression, addiction. Without clear goals, we become lost and lazy; without a clear purpose we become self-centered, which then becomes an addiction to the search for pleasure. A purposeless life can be compared to a leaf in the wind, constantly reacting and being pushed by anything that happens to it. A purposeful life is centered, rooted in firm beliefs and clear goals, using its environment as its own scope. It becomes selfless by nature, surrendering itself to a bigger ideal, and in doing so, it shrinks the self and reduces the influence of the neurotic triad.
The feeling of having a big mission acts as a north star, guiding us in the difficult choices in life that our free will presents us, categorizing the inputs we get based on what is relevant and what is not for us. When we get clear about our mission, when we know our values and priorities and commit to them, knowing the right thing to do is quite easy, no matter how hard to accomplish. If we do solid work upstream and we live in alignment with that, even our small daily habits will be filled with meaning.
QUOTES
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us”
“Your goals will always move away from you. That is why we keep evolving.”
“Nothing is more creative... nor destructive... than a brilliant mind with a purpose.”
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.”
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These three basic psychological needs, if met, contribute to the general well-being and growth of the individuals. This is whether our environment is the workplace, a sports team or personal relationships.
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The Power of Purpose:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201307/the-power-purpose
LIFE AFTER SPORT: DEPRESSION IN THE RETIRED ATHLETE:
https://believeperform.com/life-after-sport-depression-in-retired-athletes/
The after-party: Inside the life of the modern professional athlete in retirement:
https://www.si.com/nba/2017/07/03/retired-athletes-life-money-health
How To Find Purpose As A Retired Athlete:
https://medium.com/@malcolmlemmons/how-to-find-purpose-as-a-retired-athlete-8a23eb353d96
Life After the Olympics: How Athletes Make the Tough Transition:
https://www.topresume.com/career-advice/life-after-the-olympics-how-athletes-make-the-tough-transition
State of Sport 2018:
https://www.bbc.com/sport/42871491
Clarke Carlisle: ‘I should be dead. I am delighted, blessed I can use my life’:
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/22/clarke-carlisle-i-should-be-dead-blessed-interview-burnley-qpr
How athletes such as Eamon Sullivan cope with retirement:
https://theconversation.com/how-athletes-such-as-eamon-sullivan-cope-with-retirement-29339
How to help athletes adapt to life after sport:
https://theconversation.com/how-to-help-athletes-adapt-to-life-after-sport-94584Precision Nutrition Coaching revealed.
https://www.precisionnutrition.com/pn-coaching-secrets-revealed
Classical Conditioning:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning#Forward_conditioning
Clarke Carlisle Part 1 / Undr The Cosh Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28DHquLoM6I
https://www.precisionnutrition.com/
Pictures:
Alarm Clock by Congerdesign
https://pixabay.com/photos/alarm-clock-time-of-good-morning-2116007/
Hikers by Galen Crout
https://unsplash.com/photos/fItRJ7AHak8
Woman stretching by Andrea Piacquadio
https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-black-sports-bra-and-black-legging-sitting-on-red-yoga-mat-3757955/
Cigarettes by Basil MK
https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-cigarette-247040/
Glasses by Yutacar
https://unsplash.com/photos/JKMnm3CIncw
Writing on paper by Kelly Sikkema
https://unsplash.com/photos/v9FQR4tbIq8
Sand dunes By Free-Photos
https://pixabay.com/photos/sand-dunes-desert-hills-windy-691431/
Man stretching on bridge by Pixabay
https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-architecture-athlete-boardwalk-221210/
Rockpile by Seb Atkinson
https://unsplash.com/photos/2fD88YNO4EE
Basketball player by Pixabay
https://www.pexels.com/photo/arena-athlete-ball-basketball-163423/
Doors by quimono
https://pixabay.com/photos/doors-choices-choose-open-decision-1587329/
Martin Luther sculpture by GregReese
https://pixabay.com/photos/people-adult-sculpture-man-martin-3255328/
https://www.photojoiner.net/ for the photo edit
https://www.draw.io/ for the diagram