Finding True North
How clarifying your values leads to increased adherence in physique and strength outcomes.
Compliance. The one undeniable puzzle piece that is imperative to achieving the goals we set for ourselves. It’s simple. We know for example that even the best training program or dieting strategy will fail us if we do not have the capacity to comply and follow it. If it is this simple and we are all aware of this truth, why is it so hard to achieve our goals and easy to get side tracked along the way?
There are many factors that contribute to our likelihood of compliance to any given strategy or plan. This article will discuss the role of having clarity in the values we keep as well as maintaining conscious consideration of them to leverage and stay on track with our goals inside the gym. Through reading, we also aim to assist in identifying the values you wish to prioritise as well as who and what is important to you. This will help to build a roadmap for the direction you want to move in relation to your health and fitness as well as highlight whether your current behaviours are in alignment with what you truly value most.
While we can’t control every little thing that happens to us, we are able to choose how we respond. The more often we can consciously tap into this ability to live from a place of intention and alignment, the more likely we are able to live a meaningful life. The same goes for training, nutrition and lifestyle compliance. Once we have clarified our values, we are able to use them as an anchor from which we can navigate our response to obstacles and lean into intentional behaviours that serve us and our goals.
High achievers who succeed in the gym don’t pin-ball around at the mercy of every external circumstance or whim, they have clarity around who they are, what behaviours they intentionally choose to engage in, conscious awareness of limiting thoughts and mechanisms to help them live an aligned, meaningful and purposeful life.
An example of achieving clarity around your values and exactly why you’re showing up to the gym could be the thing that gets you up at 4am, sees you fight peak hour traffic to make your session before heading to work or even pushes you out of your comfort zone enough to get up onstage or on a platform to compete. Our values are the anchor that steer our ship, provide us with intrinsic motivation and are the difference between sitting on the sidelines of life wishing you could do what others do and getting in there and doing it yourself.
The Value Identification Framework
The following framework is adapted from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). If you’re not familiar with ACT, it is a psychological intervention strategy that builds on mindfulness and acceptance practices in order to affect behaviour change. It involves the practice of psychological flexibility, that is being aware of contradictory thoughts and emotions without attempting to force them away. This helps individuals to engage in healthful behaviours despite those thoughts. It involves the practice of being mindful and aware however also requires the individual as a first step to have clarified the values that are important to them as well as how they will show up in life with intention and alignment with those values.
Values are defined by the online Cambridge Dictionary as, “The beliefs people have, especially about what is right and wrong and what is most important in life, that control their behaviour.” We might commonly think of values as the tenets that we personally hold that are important to us in living a life with meaning and purpose.
To ensure we are speaking the same language, we need to differentiate between values and goals as they seem to be easily confused. Values are dynamic, ever present and can remain the same all throughout life whereas goals are achievements that can be pursued and ticked off. Values don’t need to be accepted by other people, nor do you need to ask anyone for permission to hold the values that you do [1].
Different values will take precedence at different times and as a result some values (while still important) will coast along with minimum satisfactory behaviours to ensure maintenance. For example when undertaking a competition prep the value of competition will be the main priority but other values such as health are still running at a level where they are being fulfilled at an acceptable baseline and not totally disregarded however not prioritised. There are many examples in physique and performance sports where this could be the case.
Part 1: Define what’s important
The first part of this framework is designed to help you determine which values, who and what, in relation to health and fitness (inclusive of any physique, strength or performance goals) you hold as most important. For the purpose of this article we will only use a few values as an example to guide you through the framework however you might like to use 5.
Values example:
- Health
- Accomplishment
- Confidence
What and who?:
- Community atmosphere/social relationships at the gym
We would recommend looking at lists of values found freely online to help you accurately decide those that are important to you. Further examples of values might be, strength, aesthetics, competition, notoriety and mental health just to name a few.
Part 2: Describe behaviours that help you to live into these values
Once you have decided on the values you hold most highly, we are going to take a look at what behaviours you currently engage in that either support or oppose the values that you have listed.
For example:
- Health: Participating in mindful eating, training and exercise most days of the week.
- Accomplishment: Following a training program where progress is tracked so there is a tangible record of progress.
- Confidence: Participating in mindful eating, training and exercise in a consistent manner provides evidence of the capacity to do the things that are important.
- Community atmosphere/social relationships at the gym: Attending the local gym provides a connection to the community and a space to build friendships with like minded individuals.
From here, we can unpack what really matters to us, what will bring our life more meaning and purpose and then create a ‘paint by numbers’ list of actions that we can pursue that help us to live in alignment. This will bring us closer to authenticity and provide us with a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment that is uniquely our own.
Part 3: Identifying obstacles
While up until this point this may all sound like rainbows and butterflies, we need to consider what obstacles we might face when it comes to implementing the behaviours that assist us in living into our values. The easy part is getting excited about what lights us up however putting it into practice can be challenging given the obstacles to compliance that we all face. Reflecting on these potential obstacles before we face them allows us to become mindful when they hit. This allows us to create space between a knee-jerk unhelpful reaction and instead choose a response that is in alignment with the behaviours that we really want to participate in.
The next part of this framework is looking at what thoughts and behaviours we are engaging in that take us away from living into our values. These can be especially tricky as they can form a pretty solid loop of ego oriented and unhelpful thoughts. As a result, they can lead to unhelpful behaviours and again loop us back into unhelpful thoughts. You can foresee the downward spiral that could easily take place and may even be able to recall a time you engaged in this yourself. If we look at a practical example in relation to training, it could present itself as driving home instead of heading to the gym after work. You may tell yourself you’re too tired/it’s too cold/the gym is going to be too busy. What’s happened here is that you’ve had a thought which you’ve chosen to buy into which has led to further behaviours and thoughts that move you away from living your values.
To break this down, we’ll start by looking at the thoughts that come up once an obstacle is faced. We’ll use the above example of driving home from work instead of heading to the gym. The thought starts, “I’m too tired, I can’t be bothered training.”
Some questions to ask yourself when you become mindful of this process are:
- What is the thought that I am having?
- Is that thought helpful or unhelpful?
- What behaviour is this thought encouraging me to engage in?
In doing this we have created some distance between ourselves and the thought by noticing it and asking whether this thought and the behaviours it will lead to will serve our values or not. We might decide the behaviour does serve us because we’ve trained 4 days in a row and a rest day would be reasonably placed, or we might decide that actually we are just being lazy and doing the session today will benefit us more than not. This puts the ball back in our court. We aren’t at the mercy of every whim, every feeling and every discomfort that we feel. This process gives us a sense of ownership. While ownership might be a tough pill to swallow, for those who want to move from being good to being great, it’s a freeing concept. Sure, we’re human and unhelpful ego based thoughts will populate our minds from time to time, but knowing that we are capable of deciding to choose for or against assists us to live our lives with deliberate intention.
The Choice Point
This line of intervention comes from within the ACT framework. This is where the focus is on acceptance of unhelpful thoughts, rather than the often thrashed around, “just think positive” which asks us instead to usher our thoughts aside. Realising that we don’t need to fight to suppress our unhelpful thoughts and that we can instead accept them by understanding that thoughts are not facts, allows us to engage in helpful behaviour notwithstanding the contradictory thoughts that might be present. In this way you can see how having our values defined gives us an anchor from which we can refer on to help inform our decisions. A great metaphor within ACT that is used to describe this is playing tug of war. The more you fight with the unhelpful thoughts, the harder they will fight back; ACT suggests you drop the rope.
Through defining and practicing the above psychological flexibility, an individual is able to make the conscious choice to live into their values more often. From a physique, performance and strength standpoint, this will result in greater consistency and compliance and therefore stronger processes and outcomes.
Reach out and share your thoughts, feedback and/or questions on your experiences and trials after reading! You’ll find me on @aimeelouisestcfit.
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