Hey,
For most people, the issue usually starts the same way.
It’s Sunday night. You’ve done the food shop, maybe prepped a couple of lunches, written out your workout schedule for the week. You feel motivated, organised, and ready. You tell yourself, “This time, I’m really going to stick with it.”
And for the first couple of days, everything feels like it’s finally falling into place. You hit your sessions. You eat well. You even start to feel that little buzz of pride and the sense that you’ve got momentum, that maybe this is the time it finally clicks.
But then Wednesday happens.
Work runs late. Or you’ve got extra work to catch up on. Or you’re just plain exhausted after a string of long shifts. You grab whatever’s easiest for dinner, and the workout gets pushed to tomorrow.
Except tomorrow brings its own set of problems. By Friday you’re behind, tired, and telling yourself that old familiar line: “I’ll just start fresh Monday.”
It’s such a common loop. Fired up on Sunday. Derailed midweek. Reset Monday. Repeat.
And here’s the thing, it doesn’t happen because you’re lazy. It doesn’t happen because you don’t care enough, or because you’re “bad at sticking to things.”
It happens because of the kind of goals you’ve been setting.
Most people start with outcome goals.
Lose 20 pounds.
Get
abs.
Fit into old clothes.
Run a marathon.
They sound good because they’re clear, measurable, easy to picture. They give
you something to chase. But the problem is that outcome goals are fragile.
You don’t control the number on the scale. You don’t control how your body responds week by week. You don’t control every stressful week at work, every birthday meal, every trip away.
So when life inevitably throws a curveball and you’re not marching in a straight line towards that perfect outcome, frustration kicks in. You start to feel like you’re already failing. That frustration leads to guilt, and guilt quickly becomes avoidance. And before you know it, you’ve abandoned the whole plan, not because you couldn’t do it, but because the finish line felt so far away you
gave up trying.
The truth is that you can’t control outcomes. But you can control actions.
This is where process goals come in.
Instead of obsessing about the finish line, you focus on the steps under your control. The things you can actually tick off today or this week.
Train three times this
week.
Prep lunches.
Walk 8,000 steps.
Lights out before 11pm.
None of these sound dramatic, but they’re powerful because they’re repeatable.
And when you repeat them, a funny thing happens. The results you wanted at the start? They start creeping up on you without you obsessing over them. Fat loss. Strength. Energy. Confidence. They’re the
natural byproduct of showing up for the process.
Even better, process goals survive real life. Outcome goals crumble the moment life isn’t perfect. But process goals bend with you.
Busy week at work? Maybe you can’t train four times, but you can still manage two.
Travelling? Maybe meal prep isn’t happening, but you can still hit your protein target and get in some walks.
You stay moving forward, instead of waiting for the “perfect Monday” that never really comes.
The power of process goals is that they shrink the gap between effort and reward. You don’t have to wait months for a number on the scale to tell you if you’re succeeding. You
can succeed today. Right now. Every box you tick builds momentum, and that momentum is what actually keeps you going.
So this week, think about the big goal you’ve been chasing. Then strip it right back. Ask yourself: What’s one simple action I can commit to this week, no matter how messy life gets? Maybe it’s three workouts.
Maybe it’s walking after dinner. Maybe it’s prepping breakfast instead of skipping it.
Keep it small. Keep it realistic. And repeat it.
Because you don’t need perfect
weeks to make progress. You don’t need to live in the gym or eat flawlessly every day. You just need to keep building momentum and taking one step after another.
Do that long enough, and the finish line stops being something you dream about, it becomes something you just arrive at, almost without noticing.
I hope this helps!
