Kill Your Goat by Dr. Stephen Franson

 

Kill Your Goat

 

We all know the areas in our lives in which we could “do better.”  There are behaviors that seem so ingrained in us that they become predictable – our default.   We can easily identify them; intellectually, we recognize that these behaviors are inhibiting us, distracting us or even destroying us – yet they persist.  These de-railers manifest in many forms: smoking, bad language, junk food binges or maybe something seemingly innocuous such as gossip.  They can loom as apathy, mindless choosing, or simply our inability to overcome the magnetic field between the couch and the television.  We know what we should be doing – but we fall down.

Kill your goat.

I attended the CrossFit coaching certification this year.  One of my new favorite people, Todd Widman, used the expression “Kill Your Goat.”  He was describing the tendency for all of us to have one (or more) exercises that we dislike, “can’t do,” or simply avoid like the plague during our regular workouts.  He went on to say that avoiding your “goat” hinders our progress and that we are only as strong as our goat.  He ended with the truth that we will never reach our potential while we have a goat.  Judging from the nervous laughter from the crowd and the collective fidgeting, I was not the only one who sat convicted. 

We get to make choices every day.  We get in trouble when time separates the choice and the consequences.  In the book Nudge,  Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein describe two classes within this dynamic: Investment Goods and Sinful Goods.  Investment Goods include choices that involve a front-end investment with a pay-off later (ex: exercise).  Sinful goods offer an immediate gratification, but come with long-term consequences (think Frappachino). 

Our lives are the perfect manifestation of the aggregate outcomes of our collective behaviors.  In other words, we have “chosen” ourselves into our current reality.  Our days can be distilled down to a series of choices and behaviors.   Most of us know what the better choice is in most situations.  Some behaviors are “down-hill” for us (easy; we can coast) and some are “up-hill” for us – we’ve got to stand-up and pedal.  And all of us know our goat. 

Kill your goat.

 

In Health from Within,

Dr. Stephen Franson