Do you have goals or objectives that you want to achieve?

Are they compelling enough to give you the will or desire to do what you need to do?

Or is your detour from the path of least resistance doomed from the very start?

In this episode I’m sharing my big ass goal for next year, and the reasons I have that will keep me motivated for all the long miles ahead!

If you’d like to learn more about my goal, you can find out here.

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Transcript
Hayley Food Ninja:

Hello, you are listening to the Rude Health Podcast with me, Hayley Food Ninja, where I aim to bring you all the latest tools, tips, and strategies to help you create your own version of healthy without a kale smoothie insight. Enjoy the episode! ​So today I thought I'd talk a little bit about goal setting. Because I've been talking to a couple of people, actually one, a client and one someone else that I was talking to about whether their goals were motivating enough for them. People who for example are relatively fit and they don't have a pressing reason to want to lose weight or get healthier or get fitter. It can be really hard to motivate yourself sometimes if your goal isn't really compelling. So yeah, that sort of got me thinking about goals and recently as well, I have set myself. Quite frankly, a fucking ridiculous goal. I'm going to talk to you about and even though it's absolutely fucking stupid, I feel quite confident I'm going to achieve it because I've got some really compelling reasons why I want to do it. But before I get into that and my little reveal I thought I'd cover a little bit of the basic stuff that I talked to my clients about in terms of goal-setting. And one of the things that I see probably most regularly. Is people setting some goals and thinking about all of the rewards that are going to come and how amazing it's going to be. And all of the really positive things about the goal, but when you set some goals, you also need to think about. Yes, those rewards are brilliant. And I can visualize all those things. I can imagine myself doing these things. But it's also about what cost are you willing to pay to achieve that goal? Because, a goal is going to be difficult to achieve, it should be challenging because a goal is a detour from the path of least resistance, because most of the time. When we're going about our daily business. We do a lot of things on autopilot, which we have to right? Cause imagine if you had to consciously think about, I must brush my teeth, I must tie my shoe laces. So a lot of things are done in subconscious. So goals are hard because you've got to consciously take a detour away from this path of least resistance. So when I talk to my clients, we talk about having these two elements to achieve their goal. And also talking about not just visualizing the positives. If that sounds a bit like gobbledy goop. Let me explain. So most goals have two elements to achieving them. So you've got to have the will and the way. What I mean by that is the will is the motivational bit, right? It's your desire, your mindset, your intention whether you prioritize your goal. It's the will to achieve that goal. And that's the bit that if that is not really strong, if you haven't got a really compelling reason, why you want to achieve this goal? It'll be really fucking hard. And I know that probably sounds a bit weird because people are probably thinking why would you set yourself a goal you don't really want to achieve? But I do see it quite a lot. And. Sometimes I see people striving for goals that they think they should. You think you want to promotion in your job. You think you ought to want to buy the next model car up, wow. That's me really. I'm showing people my, the depth of my knowledge about cars that. But, it might be something that someone else wants for you, or it might be a societal expectation, for example. And I think of, the amount of times I've had calls with people who say they want to lose weight, but actually when you dig down a little bit deeper, they're not there yet. They're not ready. It's not their goal. It might be, their doctors that they have to lose weight, or it might even be that their husband or wife, has seen that they're really unhappy about their weight and push them into having this appointment. When they're not quite there yet, they're not quite ready. Having the will is really important. And That's probably the most important bit that you need to bring to the table. Because the other element, which is the WAY. Which is the knowledge and the skills to be able to execute the things you need to achieve this goal. The cognitive ability, the capacity, that kind of thing. You can get help with that. I'm here for most of the time, people come to me with the goal, which might be, I want to improve my sleep. I want to lose weight. I want to learn how to improve my relationship with food and stop using food as a coping mechanism, for example. That's my job is to show them the way to do that, to give them the skills and the knowledge. If you've got a goal that the desire and the will to achieve it is strong. It almost doesn't matter if you haven't got the skills yet, because you can find a coach or someone to be accountable to where you can take a course to develop that. And if you've got that really strong desire, you're going to do everything it takes to get the knowledge and the skills. So it's almost like that's the easy bit, right? Whereas for me when people say to me, oh my God, I really want to lose fat. And I've been trying for years and I've been on every diet, but I just don't know how to do it. I'm just like, this is fucking awesome. Because they've got a really compelling reason. They've failed lots and lots of times they feel like shit about themselves. And I've got this way. That's really actually really simple and it will fit. We can adapt it to their lifestyle and stuff. The will to achieve a goal. Or having the right goal that's really compelling is super, super important. Yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit about this ridiculous goal. I've set for myself as an example of something that has a really compelling reason. So there's two reasons really. So the first one, oh, this is going to be a bit personal now. Should I be being super personal on my podcast. I don't know. I don't really care. I don't know how to be any other way, so let's just go for it. Let me say, I dunno, about two or three months ago, probably a bit longer, probably about six months ago. If I'm being honest I am obviously a woman of a certain age. I know. I know. I don't look that old. But I am of that age where, perimenopausal menopausal stuff is starting to happen. Shit is starting to hit the fan is the best way that I can describe And obviously as a health professional, right? I know all of the physical things that might happen. But what I wasn't really prepared for. Was how it was going to make me feel mentally. And the best way I can describe it I started to feel like I would never really do anything extraordinary ever again. I wouldn't be capable of it or I'm getting too old for it, which I know sounds really fucking ridiculous. Age is just a number. And I truly believe that, especially if you're taking care of yourself, because age really is truly just a number then But I'm just trying to like, be real about the way I felt about it. I felt like I was disappearing. I felt like I was becoming less important to people. Like I didn't have anything important to say or. I dunno. I dunno how to describe it. Really. It just, I felt like I was getting smaller. And less useful and Oh, you're getting to an age now where you'll never really do anything extraordinary or achieve great things. And like I said there's no logic to this, it's purely fucking emotional, hormones all over the place. But it really did start to affect me and like I said, I felt like I was getting smaller. And I wallowed in that for a little while. And then I thought who's to say that I won't do that. It's only me who can decide that actually I can still do extraordinary things. So that's one of the reasons I set myself this challenge. So the challenge is. Last year. Was it last year? Yeah, it was last year. I was due to do a hundred kilometer walk across the south downs and it's a hundred kilometer continuous walk. So you walk for, I dunno, like 24, 28 hours, however long it's going to take. So I was going to do that. And about five days before we were due to do it I got COVID, which if I'm honest, Is probably a good idea because I did hardly any training. Like I love walking, But had I been going out for massive, long walks up hills and all that shit, not really. So it was probably a good thing that it didn't happen. And then as I say, all this like menopause shit happened, not long after that. And I started to think. I wouldn't have been able to do it anyway. And I'm not. I'm not a super fit person anymore, which has someone, in my industry, it's a really horrible feeling, so I thought, do you know what. When all this kind of, feeling smaller, feeling like I was disappearing happened, I thought Fuck it. I am going to do that a hundred kilometer walk. I probably can't persuade anyone else to do it with me again, like I did last time. Certainly my other half is just like nah. Which is fair enough. I'll do it. My own it's fine. I'm still going to be capable of doing extraordinary things. And I have to say the reason I came out of that rut or that period of self-indulgence pity party is due in no small part to the fact that I started CrossFit And I know people are like CrossFit, drink the Kool-Aid it's like a cult. But I joined CrossFit again in June, Westover CrossFit give a little shout out to my box. And it's really helped me again with my confidence. In terms of being fit and stuff and lifting weights and all that kind of stuff. Like I said, I started again in June. So I think that kind of helped me get out of this rut and gave me a bit more of, my old attitude back, which was like, fuck this, I am going to do something extraordinary. So there's a company called Action Challenge. And they run a series of these events called the ultra challenge series. As I said, most of them are a hundred K walks. Some of them are like 50 K walks, that kind of thing. So I went onto the website. When was this? I don't know, probably about five, six weeks ago. And I thought I'm going to pick one of these hundred cable walks. And I'm going to do it because I can do it. I can do it. I've got my mojo back and I'm going to do it. So I was browsing on the website and I thought should I do the South Down's one again, shall I pick something different. Anyway, I couldn't decide. And I was on the website and I thought, what, if you want to do some extraordinary put your money where your mouth is like literally step up. And I thought, fuck I'm going to do all of them! So I am doing all 14 ultra series challenge events. Next year. And that is. Two marathons. I'm walking these by the way. I'm not fucking running. I'm not that stupid. So doing two marathons. I am doing four 50 kilometer walks and I'm doing eight 100 kilometer walks. Which I know stupid. The first one is in January and then the last one is in October. So I signed up for them all. I was like, fuck it. I'm doing all of them going to do all of them. And then I started putting them in my diary and I was like, hang on a minute. A lot of these 100km walks are only two weeks apart. So like the first one is at the end of April and it's around the perimeter of the Isle of Wight. But then two weeks later, there's another a hundred kilometer one and then two weeks later, there's another one. And then two weeks later, there's another one. It's quite a feat I've set for myself. All from a little peri-menopausal pity party. As if the peri-menopause doesn't have enough to fucking answer to so I'm doing this challenge. And like I said, I did have a compelling reason in that I just felt shit And I just wanted to feel like I was still capable of amazing things. Yeah. And that will get me so far. So that's a personal challenge that I've set myself. But then I started thinking. Like why shouldn't someone else get the benefit of my blood, sweat, tears, blisters, whatever else is going to happen to me. I'm doing these walks with a fucking spinal fusion so who knows what's going to happen, whether I'll actually be in one piece by the end. And I, but I didn't want, I didn't want the pressure of having to raise a certain amount of sponsorship money. So I decided to self-fund them, but then I thought actually, why shouldn't somebody get the benefit? And I will raise money for charities that I want to raise money for. That mean a lot to me. And then also I don't have to raise a minimum amount, so I'm not hounding people for loads of money, but, I will raise some money for some charities that mean a lot to me because that will also give me more of the will. It'll give me the desire, the motivation I'll be in the right mindset because I won't just be doing it for me. I'll be doing it for other people. So the charities that I've chosen. So I've chosen two charities and I'm going to split the proceeds equally between the two. So the first one is Mind mental health charity. I can do a whole other fucking podcast about why mind means a lot to me, but let's not go there just yet. Suffice to say I've had quite a few periods of poor mental health and quite a few diagnoses of different kinds shall we say. And I've had the benefit of accessing mental health services when I've needed and it's really helped me. With all the pressures that are on the NHS at the moment I think Mind will, their work is even more important because I know for example, that, I had the benefit of having talking therapies for quite a long period of my life. And right now, I know that the waiting lists for that are 18 months in some areas. So I know that, mind will be a lifeline to a lot of people. So that's my first charity. The second one is a community project that is run by my friend, Kristin Ingraham Morgan, who is the owner of LN CrossFit in Lincoln. So she runs a project called the strong girls squad. And this is a project that. Goes into schools and community groups and stuff like that. And teaches girls age 11 to 17. How to lift weights. And to encourage them. And let them know that lifting weights and being strong is cool. And the reason I've decided to support that project. Not only Is it because my friend Kristin is just a fucking badass and I know that those girls will be getting so much value out of it. But. Also, I think. If I had access to that kind of thing, when I was that age. Things might have gone quite differently. When I was age 11 to 17. I was regularly running away from home, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, doing all sorts of shit that I shouldn't have been doing, basically. And I know that since I've started lifting weights And doing CrossFit, the effect that it's had on my mental health in the past, sort of 10 12,15 years since I've been lifting weights and stuff. It's been really impactful and has helped my mental health. Massively. And I just think if I'd had access to something like strong girls squad when I was 11, 12, 13, and just, doing a hell of a lot of shit that I shouldn't have been doing that actually continued into my adult life some of it. Then I think my life would have been a lot different and I really hope that these girls get the benefit of that. That is a really good example of, having a really compelling WILL part of your goal because, I bet when I'm ugly crying kilometer 70 on like my third walk and it's pitch black and it's fucking raining. I think, yes. Thinking about those personal challenges that I talked about that, all this kind of peri-menopause or stuff that might've got me so far. But thinking about the people that might be helped by mind, or thinking about those girls who might discover a love of, doing massive fucking deadlifts. That's what's gonna keep me walking, through blisters and whatever else. I don't know if we get attacked by cows or something. Whatever else is going to happen on these walks. Yeah that's a bit of a personal share today. But I just wanted to show you like the power of a really evocative WILL or desire that, that you need, because lots of people can provide you with the way, the way for me achieving my goal is gonna be doing lots of walk in training. I've already started doing that. And some of my friends from CrossFit and stuff had been walking with me That's going to really help me as well. So I've got my way sorted, but thing is to do the way to do the training walks to keep myself injury free, to feed myself well. So that I lessen my risk of injury and, keep myself strong. I need to have that will, that really strong desire to be able to execute those things, to achieve my goal. Yeah, I hope that makes sense. And I guess the only other thing I want to say about goals. Is that a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about all we're doing visualization, right? What's it going to be like when I've achieved my goal? Yeah, what's it going to look like? What is the outcome going to be? What's the ideal end point? How am I going to look? How am I going to feel? What kind of person am I going to be? But most people stop there. And then what happens is when they're along this like path to Nirvana. They forget to think about what are the barriers going to be? Because when you come across a barrier that is put in your way to you achieving your goal, if you haven't thought about how you're going to deal with that in advance, it could very well just knock you off that path and then you decide that the goal isn't worth it. So in terms of visualization, yes, visualize how amazing it's going to be when you get to the end, but also make sure you visualize what barriers am I going to come up against? Who's going to criticize me, what are they going to say? What am I going to say to them? How will I deal with it? What's my, plan for this stuff. What will I do when this barrier happens or this person says this thing, how will I deal with that? And that's something that I've been thinking about a lot, because yes, it's all very well for me to have this really strong desire and motivation to do these walks. But what will happen if I don't visualize how they're actually going to feel? What will happen? At three o'clock in the morning when I'm 70 kilometers in and it's pissing down with rain and my, the batteries run out on my head torch and I've got blisters and I'm limping to the next checkpoint. If I don't think about that now. How will I feel if I've never imagined that situation. And then the first time it happens to me it's going to make it really hard to not give up. At the moment I doing a little brainstorm of what could go wrong on these walks. You Could I run out of water for example. And what's the plan. First of all, to mitigate that and stop it happening, but what's the plan, if it does happen? How many batteries do I need in my head torch, for example. What will I do if I get blisters, how will I treat them? Should I start practicing my foot care and blister treatment now, for example. Doing all of these things now, Means that I'm increasing my chance of success because I'm not just thinking about the feeling of getting over the finish line and getting another medal right? I'm not just thinking about that. That's not enough. Because if I come across a barrier. And I haven't thought about it. What's the likelihood I'm going to get to the end. Not very likely. Is it. If you would like to know more about my Ultra Series challenge then I'm going to put the link to my GoFund me page in the show notes, and if you would like to sponsor me, that would be amazing. I understand that obviously I haven't actually done any of these walks yet. So if you want to wait until I'm two or three in, just to make sure that I'm actually gonna do them, then do that. But yeah, you can read a little bit more about why I've chosen these charities and stuff. And yeah, any kind of sharing that you can do Or anything like that, then, I'll be really grateful for If you live near one of these walks and you would like to meet up if you'd like to do part of the walk with me, because you can do a quarter of the walk or half of the walk as well, let me know, send me a message because I'd really like to use it as an opportunity to meet lots of people or people have not met in real life, internet friends, if you will. Anyway. That's it. I hope you've enjoyed this episode a little bit different, little bit personal sharing. Oversharing, probably on quite good at that. Anyway, thanks very much for listening. If you've got any questions you want answered on the next podcast, send them into me, [email protected]. I'd love to do an episode where I answer everybody's questions. That'd be really cool. And until then, thanks for listening. And take care of yourselves.

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