Picture the scene: Last month, you set yourself a goal to work out five days a week. You bought a new pair of sneakers, reactivated your gym membership, and even ordered some creatine off Amazon.
Everything was going swimmingly until you had a week of early meetings, a birthday dinner, and a sick toddler, three weeks in. You missed one workout, then two. You started to berate yourself for failing, and, feeling disheartened, threw in the towel then and there.
If this scenario feels familiar, Steve Kamb, a fitness coach and personal growth writer based in Nashville, wants you to try something different: giving yourself some grace.
Kamb, 41, is a personal trainer and the founder of Nerd Fitness, an online fitness coaching company aimed at busy people who struggle to stick to their health and nutrition goals. His upcoming book, “How To Try Again,” is based on the lessons he’s learned over 17 years of helping people create a consistent workout routine.
In the book, Kamb outlines a simple formula he encourages people to turn to when their brains default to all-or-nothing thinking and self-criticism. He developed it with fitness in mind, but says it can be applied to any new goal or habit.
“I wanted to come up with something that was really memorable that people can go back to when their brain starts to spiral and say, ‘I’m a loser. I couldn’t follow through. I’m never going to make changes stick,” he said.
While Kamb is not the first to champion a compassionate approach to goal-setting — he says his methodology draws from the work of behavioral science leaders and self-improvement writers — his formula serves as a helpful reminder that trying harder isn’t always the answer. “If tough love for ourselves worked, it would’ve worked already,” Kamb said.
Steve Kamb’s P.A.C.T. formula
“Make a P.A.C.T,” Kamb said, “Pause, accept, change something, and try again.”
Pause
If you’re struggling to stick to your new routine, the first step is to pause and reflect, Kamb said.
If the answer to the questions, “Is this working for me? Do I actually like it, and is this something I see myself sticking with?” is no, then give yourself permission to pick a different path, he said.
When life feels chaotic, it’s also OK to “tread water” for a while, rather than pushing for more progress. “If we don’t know where we’re going or we’re just trying to get through our days, then treading water with a really small workout, going for a five-minute walk, writing one sentence in a journal, just something that reminds us that we’re staying afloat, is perfectly acceptable,” Kamb said.
In the midst of writing his book, Kamb said he was treading water with his workouts because fitness wasn’t his top priority; meeting his deadline was. “I haven’t gotten stronger. I haven’t run faster,” he said, “a lot of it is being OK with doing way less.”
Acceptance
The second step in P.A.C.T is all about accepting where you’re at.
In an ideal world, we would all be smashing it at work, making gains in the gym, eating a nutritious, whole-food diet, and investing in our relationships, all while looking put together and keeping on top of our chores.
In reality, life looks messier than this, and be it time, caring responsibilities, or illness, we are often working with some restrictions. “The sooner we can accept our messy, ugly reality with clothes on the floor and a messy house and the state of the world, the sooner we can start to do something differently about it,” Kamb said.
Change
The third step is to change something. “If we just do the same thing we’ve done before, we’re going to get the same results,” Kamb said.
Start by investigating what might have prevented you from hitting your target. Did you try to run weekly but found that you didn’t enjoy it? Did you try to work out in the mornings but realized that was making you miserable?
Once you’ve teased out what wasn’t working, you can try to reach your goal in a new way. “It can be a different type of exercise. It can be a different nutritional strategy. It can be the same type of exercise, but instead working out in the evening,” he said.
Try it for 30 to 60 days and see what happens. Approach it like a “non-judgmental experiment,” Kamb said. “Regardless of the outcome, that’s more valuable information that we can apply to our next attempt.”
Try
The final step is to try. It’s easy to procrastinate by falling into the trap of endless preparation because trying something new is scary, Kamb said. “Being seen trying, especially if you’re trying in public, is downright terrifying.”
But only once we’ve started can we finally make progress on this new thing, he said.
Give yourself permission to “start ugly,” and accept that you’re not going to get it perfect on the first try.
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