Goals come in all shapes and sizes. For many, especially around the turn of a calendar year, their ambitions center around shorter-term objectives like eating healthier and building strength. Others may be thinking about longer-term plans, like what they want to achieve in their careers or the travels they’ll enjoy once they’re empty nesters.
Regardless of the type of goal you set, there is one constant: What you choose to do with your time on a daily basis can influence what you ultimately achieve.
Time moves fast, and if you’re not intentional with what you do with it day in and day out, it can slip away — and your goals with it.
To provide inspiration around how daily habits can connect to larger pursuits, we asked five healthy-living experts from Life Time to share the goals they’re going after and the actions they’re taking on a regular basis to help them get there.
Barbara Powell, MA, NBC-HWC
Holistic performance coach for Life Time Mind
Goal: Write a book on running and mindset.
I adore both writing and running, as well as sharing helpful information and stories with others to help them feel empowered. This big and lofty goal allows me to evolve in both my career and in my personal development.
I am actively working through self-limiting beliefs that get in the way of writing regularly. I’ve learned that the more we do, the more we believe in ourselves. And for me, the more I write, the more I believe I’m a writer. The more I run trails, the more I believe I’m a trail runner. This is a goal I’m both scared of and eager to accomplish. This last year I trained for and ran a 100-mile race, which reminded me that I am capable!
Daily Habits to Get There
- Write or edit, ideally in the morning. That is the time of day when I’m energetically at my creative peak.
- Move my body, ideally outside. Movement keeps my mind active and feeling nourished — and even better if I can reap the benefits of nature while I’m doing it too.
- Read, ideally in the evening. I want to prioritize reading so I’m regularly feeding my mind a variety of writing styles and storytelling.
Austin Head
5-Star ELI group fitness performer at Life Time Dumbo in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Life Time 23rd Street, Life Time One Wall Street, Life Time Sky (Manhattan), and Life Time Midtown in New York City
Goal: Setting the Guinness World Record title for performing the most lunges in an hour.
I turned 30 in August, and I wanted a big challenge for myself for this next year. I was talking about this idea with one of the fantastic members at Life Time who also works for Guinness World Records and she encouraged me to do this. The current record is 2,376 lunges. I’m excited to push myself more than I ever have before!
Daily Habits to Get There
- Work on mobility. I teach MB360 (a mind-body training program that combines meditation and mobility work with functional strength and conditioning exercises) almost every day, and that is where I get a lot of my mobility work done. On days I don’t teach MB360, I will incorporate mobility exercises on my own.
- Focus on lunges. I aim to do one to two miles of lunges at least three to four times per week.
- Make time to meditate. I practice guided meditations around visualization and gratitude every day. This helps me see my goal so I can believe my goal.
Mike Thomson, CPT
Dynamic Personal Trainer at Life Time in Overland Park, Kan.
Goals: Run several races at a number of distances, including 200 meter, 800 meter, and 1 mile track races, as well as the Life Time Miami Half Marathon, Chicago Spring Half Marathon, and fall Chicago Half Marathon races.
I’m also doing the Leadville Trail 100 MTB and am aiming to improve my time from last year — and going for the big buckle as a prize! I will also be competing in some HYROX adventure races that involve a mixture of running, conditioning, and strength-based movements.
I like to be part of the communities that I coach, which includes endurance athletes and hybrid athletes. I train athletes online and in person in each of these distances and disciplines, so being able to “walk the walk” and “talk the talk” is important to me.
One takeaway from 2023 that I’m integrating into 2024 is cross-training. In the past, when I focused on a running race, I thought my biking mileage had to decrease, and vice versa. I now know the two sports can coexist. As a matter of fact, I feel better when I add more biking, rowing, assault biking, and ski erging into my routine — and of course, I always do my strength training.
Daily Habits to Get There
- Prioritize sleep. If I get the right amount of sleep, I’m more driven, focused, and I recover faster so I can do the next hard workout without risk of injury.
- Grow my Life Time training community. Having training partners is going to be key for my training this year, and I try to get as many people to train with me in the Life Time community as I can. I have different groups for each sport: I have both running and biking groups, I have strength-training buddies, and I attend group classes for strength and HIIT training.
- Focus on nutrition. Now that I’m older than 40 years old, I can’t be as willy-nilly as I might’ve once been able to about my training. I feel the difference after a night of drinking or having too many sweets. Additionally, hitting my daily supplement goals is important because I know it will help speed up my recovery and allow me to keep training hard.
Rosalind (Roz) Frydberg
Group fitness instructor and ARORA lead at Life Time in Woodbridge, Ontario
Goal: Increase protein intake and improve how frequently I eat, as well as gain physical strength.
I love the feeling of working out on an empty stomach, but sometimes I stretch it for too long. Due to the nature of my schedule, I work most evenings, get home late, and wake up early. Through trial and error, I’ve learned what to eat in the morning that leaves my body feeling the best, and I know I need at least 60 grams of protein for my body weight. As of late, I’m taking supplements, vegan collagen, and eating hardboiled eggs mixed with tuna or chickpeas.
In terms of getting stronger physically, I want to run farther distances and improve my speed walking and breathing. Additionally, I want to be able to perform 150 pushups with a maximum of a 30-second break after each block of 50, and be able to do this three times a day for a year. I turned 70 years old on Christmas Day, and my reason behind these goals is ultimately to stay healthy, active, and strong!
Daily Habits to Get There
- Eat at more regular intervals. Although I’m a fan of intermittent fasting, I will reduce the length of time I’m fasting so I can increase and distribute my protein intake more efficiently.
- Perform pushups every day. This intentionality with my schedule will help me focus on including pushups in my exercise routine.
- Start a log or journal. I quantitatively measure the number and type of pushups I complete as well as how much time it takes for me to do my desired number of reps. I also document how I feel when I do the work and track my energy level and food intake to see if that correlates with performance.
April Fort, 500 E-RYT, PRYT, AYS, YACEP
Yoga leader at Life Time in Cypress, Texas
Goal: Prioritize self-care.
Self-care is the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health. Unfortunately, one’s own health is often placed behind getting things done: grocery shopping, taking care of children, and/or the countless tasks that happen day in and day out of the fast-paced society most of us live in.
I’ve made prioritizing self-care my goal because I need to be reminded to do the little things every day that ensure health and happiness, so they don’t get buried underneath my to-do list.
Daily Habits to Get There
- Begin the day with meditation. I’m aiming for at least 10 minutes at the start of the day. The guided meditations in the Life Time Digital app help me a lot — especially when sitting and trying to meditate on my own doesn’t suffice.
- Drink 8 ounces of warm water before I eat or drink anything else. According to Ayurveda, drinking warm water jumpstarts your Agni, or digestive fire, so your body is able to assimilate nutrients in a more efficient manner through the rest of the day. This is also beneficial for hydrating after being asleep all night.
- Do one thing per day for myself. Whether this looks like a workout, a nap, reading a chapter from my favorite book, or a quick moment of sitting in the sunshine, I want to find even just five minutes to prioritize myself each day.
- Reflect before starting a new project. Before I say yes to something, I want to ask myself, Does this contribute to creating the life I want to live? We often need to pause and assess if what we’re doing lines up with the life we’re hoping to create, the values we live by, and what we strive to be our priorities.
