“A major roadblock to success is being unwilling to make sacrifices. When you set an important goal, ask what you’re ready to give up achieving it. Future excellence often depends on letting go of past priorities.” – Adam Grant

I recently came across this excerpt from Adam Grant, a best-selling author and professor at the Wharton school of business at UPenn. His sentiment about deleting past priorities rings so true especially regarding fitness.

A lot of great coaches will have you map out a vision for success. Filled with to-do lists to gain traction towards those goals. These tactics help to assist you in living a life full of commitments, something that we preach during classes, our internship program, and the business of strength mentorship. However, there’s a balance we need to consider…

It’s easy to add things to our ever-growing list of priorities and as we do so the scales will eventually start to tip. It’s time to ask yourself, ‘what are you willing to give up to gain something or attain a goal?’ Easier said than done. For example – you want to improve your overall physical fitness and commit to adding to, your already busy day, a 6am workout. Sounds like a plan – but are you willing to delete the takeout dinners, booze and commit to an earlier bedtime to accomplish this goal?

What are you willing to delete from your life that are impeding your ability to obtain your desired goals? Here are a few of mine…

Delete List:
1. Will not de-prioritize my personal training times for meetings or other obligations. Everyone gets busy and the first thing to go in my daily planner is my ability to get a quality training session done. No more over-scheduling my days.

2. Will not keep ice cream in the house. My wife Dana does consumer marketing insights for Talenti Gelato, Breyers and Magnum ice cream which makes this a tough one, but the easy access to all this goodness hasn’t been good for my diet! It must go.

3. Will not snooze my alarm. This happens too often and makes me fumble with my morning routine of talking the dog for a long walk and eating a healthy breakfast. Those few extra minutes of sleep are not worth it and are getting deleted from my morning.

Prioritizing your goals and understanding what needs to be added and subtracted from your daily routine to obtain them is the first step. Don’t allow others to coerce you when they bust your chops (my brother, Matt hasn’t had a French fry in years! It took me a while, but I learned to stop bothering him about it)!

“Control your own destiny so you know you’re in good hands.”

In strength,
Dan Goodman