115. Identity Over Action: Why Most Goals Fail and What Actually Creates Lasting Change

In this episode, Dr. Stacy Heimburger discusses the importance of setting intentions for the new year by focusing on identity rather than just actions. She emphasizes the need to build a foundation of identity to support habit formation and introduces the concept of a focus word as a guiding principle for personal growth. The conversation also highlights the significance of community support in achieving goals and encourages listeners to reflect on their values and desired identity for the year ahead.

Key Takeaways:

• We often fail at habits because we skip building a foundation.
• Changing our identity is crucial for lasting change.
• Focus on who you want to become, not just what to do.
• A focus word can help guide decisions and actions.
• There is no deadline for making positive changes.
• Community support can enhance personal growth efforts.
• Visualizing your future self can clarify your goals.
• Small, incremental changes can lead to significant growth.
• Your focus word acts as a filter for opportunities.
• You don't have to navigate this journey alone.

Join Kickstart 2026!  www.sugarfreemd.com/kickstart2026

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome to the new year. Let's talk about picking a focus word or a North Star. So I love that everyone starts 2026 with big goals, and what I don't love is that big goals have a tendency to peter out pretty quickly. And so over the next couple of episodes, I want to introduce you to just a different way to maybe set up your goals and your thoughts about how we want to approach this year in regards to our goals, in regards to sort of making this the best year that it can be.

So I want to start by saying, we don't fail at habits. A lot of times it feels like we do, but what we really fail at is setting this baseline. We're skipping the part that actually makes the habits stick. Because every January we jump into like, what am I going to eat? How much weight am I going to lose? How much am I going to work out? What am I going to be good at this year, right?

And then by January, we're exhausted, discouraged, and thinking that we're failures again, right? And that we just can't stick to anything and it kind of just falls apart. So I want to stress nothing is wrong with you, but we don't build the habits first, we build our identity first.

And so let me explain a little bit about how that works, okay?

When we say something like, I'm going to work out more, and then we decide we're going to work out five days a week and we're going to do an hour every day, and we go get that new gym membership and maybe we got ourselves some cute little workout clothes for Christmas, right? We haven't really built a foundation for that. We haven't talked about why we want to do that. We haven't talked about becoming the person that does that easily.

Lots of times we pick these resolutions and there's this little part of our brain that is telling us that's hard, that feels hard, that's too much, that's too different. And we try and just ignore it, right? This is kind of where we use like the strength of will, right? Our willpower, and just thinking we can bully ourselves into doing what we've considered the right thing, whether that's working out, cutting out sugar—

—whatever it is. So whether it's a personal goal, a health goal, a relationship goal, a work goal, whatever it is, we go straight to action. But we have not set a foundation for those actions.

Our brain thinks those new things are hard because that's what it tries to do. You know, it's always looking for things that are new and deciding they're hard. And so we're setting ourselves up for things to be more difficult and more likely to fail.

As opposed to setting it up in a way that we are changing our identity, where we are picturing the person we want to become and then asking ourselves what that person does every day that is easy for them, that makes those things possible, right?

So instead of saying, I'm going to work out five days a week, we might say something like, I want to be a person who exercises daily, right? And which feels easier. Like even as I'm saying it as an example, it feels easier in my body to say, I'm a person who moves their body every day.

And then when we think about, okay, if that feels easier, I'm a person that moves my body, like I'm a person that enjoys movement and activity, what kind of movement and activity does that person like? And then we set—like we kind of have to backtrack and set the actions that way.

So we don't want to do actions without foundation because then when our motivation dips, it's easy to fall back to our current identity, which is someone who doesn't exercise every day, right? Or someone who eats sugar or someone who—whatever it is, all right?

So if deep down we have not decided to change our identity and we still see ourselves as someone who does not stay consistent or always quits or starts off strong and then fails, or does great all day until dinner—whatever that is—our brain is very quickly and quietly, kind of tricky, going to steer us right back to that.

Identity will always win, okay? If you hear nothing else during this podcast episode today, identity will always win.

So if we want to make a true lasting change, we have to change our identity. We have to become the person that does the actions easily, okay?

So when we want to do this identity-based change, instead of saying, what action should I do, we should say, who am I becoming? Who do I want to be in 2026?

So not just what do I want to do, but who am I becoming? Who do I want to be?

I think one of the easiest ways to start this process in your brain—and don't freak out that this is like a January 1st episode and we haven't done this work yet—there is no emergency to making positive change in our lives, okay? There is not, like there's not a deadline. We can start this on February 1st, not a big deal.

But I want you to think about what values do you hold dear and use that as your North Star, right? So we're going to take what is important to me and who do I want to become. And when we merge those two things, it's like this beautiful glowing light in the distance that we can really anchor ourselves to and work toward.

So if we want to say that this new version of me is a very grounded, calm person, right, who doesn't get frazzled easily, who is emotionally well-balanced—whatever it is, right—this is not a perfect version, but this is like, you know, we want to get one step better this year and then we'll work on another step better next year.

So if I want to say, I am a person who just moves daily, like I like being outdoors, I'm a person that moves daily, then I can say, well, what does that look like? So does that mean I walk my dog every day? What does that person do?

And we can do a little bit of daydreaming—we call this future self in the coaching world. What does future me, who easily exercises daily without thinking twice about it, what kind of things does she enjoy? What kind of movement does she like? And then that can lead me to my actions.

So I like walking my dog. Maybe I set a walking goal, right? Do you see how this works?

Maybe if I decide I really like to dance, maybe I sign up for a dance class—coming from a very different energy of, I need to lose weight, I'm going to go sign up for a dance class.

Right? This is, I'm a person who likes to move my body and I enjoy movement and I enjoy dancing, so I'm going to sign up for a dance course. So it's very different energy, and it seems like semantics, but I promise you it is not. This is the way that we get these habits to stick.

So if we want to be someone who eats more of the rainbow, right? I've always actually been a little bit jealous of the people who really like vegetables. So maybe I want to be someone who really has pretty plates with lots of veggies and eats a rainbow.

And so then I can say, that's how future me eats. And then I can say, well, how would that work in a very satisfied, calm way? Okay, so I probably am not going to go stock my fridge on January 1st, right?

I've actually done this before—and I will—maybe I haven't decided exactly what I'm doing for 2026, see? And there's no emergency. The world's not falling. Like everything's good.

But I did a little goal of like, I'm just going to add more vegetables, right? So I'm going to work really hard to add one vegetable a day to something that I'm eating. Right?

So it can start very small to become this future us that eats a beautiful rainbow plate, okay? So whatever that is.

So the focus word, right, can help us capture who we're becoming. So if I want to be nourished, right—if I'm going to do my rainbow plate and I want to be nourished—maybe that's my North Star. Maybe that's my word.

If I want to be consistent, right? Or present. I love the idea of being present.

This word should feel very calm, not pressuring.

I also love ChatGPT—it can help you come up with a huge list of words.

What one of my clients has done—because I do love a focus word, there's a prior podcast on it, we can put the link in—but I do just think it helps, especially most of my listeners, most of my clients are pretty busy, okay?

We have a tendency to fill up our schedules. We are used to multitasking. We are used to being high-achieving. We are used to being able to tackle it all.

And a focus word can help us say no to things. And that's why I think it's so clever, right? This North Star.

So if my focus word—like last year, my focus word was—actually two years ago—was balance, right? So when I could focus on the word balance and people presented a lot of opportunities to me, I had to really look and see what's already on my plate.

Because I knew with the word balance that if I said yes to something, I was going to have to let something go. And it just changed the way I interpreted any opportunity that was presented to me, whether that was going to be a yes or a no.

So it's kind of the same idea with this focus word. If I have decided that I'm going to be someone who eats a rainbow, maybe my North Star, my focus word is nourished, right? And that just makes it another level of easy to make good food decisions.

Because my focus is about being nourished. So as much as I might like that piece of candy, that is not nourishment. So it might just make it easier to say no to that because I'm focused on being nourished, right?

This year, my focus is going to be more about my community, right? I'm really relying on my wolf pack, right? So my people that are always there, that are supporting me. I know they're there, but I'm not good at asking for help.

But this year, that is my focus, right? I'm going to be a little more intentional with my community. So that helps me make decisions, right? So if I'm launching a new product, if I need something for the kids, right? I, with that as my North Star, can more easily tap into asking for help.

Or asking for support, right?

Last year when my word was growth, I was kind of just—it made me very singular focused, not tapping into my community.

So you can see these words have big meaning and they really will like round out and decide for you what actions you're going to take.

So the focus word becomes like a filter, but also an anchor, okay? And so I want you to think of it like that.

I also want you to understand that even when we do this work, we're going to slip and that's okay. But if we've written these things down and maybe told some people, it just makes it easier to bring it back, okay?

Here's the other thing I want to say about this. Our brain does an amazing amount of thinking and processing in the background of our day, right? We do not need to necessarily go journal on this right now.

If you are driving to work or driving home from work or taking a walk, your brain—if you just ask it to like, that's interesting. Like think about this. Wonder what kind of person I want to be. Who do I want to be by December of 2026? Who am I becoming? What would be a good value-based focus word for me?

Let your brain think about that in the background. And it will. I promise you it will. And then it can kind of come together a little bit.

Okay, the other thing I want you to understand is you do not need to do this alone.

I am currently running—we actually start in a couple of days—running a challenge group, Kickstart 2026, where this is what we're going to talk about. We're setting these baseline habits, doing things like this, discussing like, who am I becoming? What actions do I want to have? What are some baseline behaviors that I can do?

And I've got four amazing guest coaches in there. I still am a little overwhelmed by their support—that they jumped right in and said that they would love to do a little guest coaching.

So they have done these amazing coffee talks with me, talking about these things, talking about finances, talking about organization—and they're in there.

So this was me tapping into my community, right? Getting that support. And all it's done is add so much value to my community.

And so I love them for helping me, and I hope that you guys really enjoy it.

So it's a 26-day challenge, $26, all in honor of 2026. And I really hope that you will jump in. And that is at www.sugarfreemd.com/forward slash kickstart2026, and I of course will have the link in the show notes.

If you think this is helpful, please share it with a friend and grab a friend for the challenge. Look, it's $26. You spend more than that in like two days of Starbucks, and this is going to set you up for so much more success in 2026.

Setting your identity is just the first part. We're also going to talk about how to set some of those goals, how to set these baselines that are non-negotiable.

And I just really hope it's going to set you up for a super successful 2026. So hopefully I will see you in the challenge. Otherwise, I will talk to you next week.

All right. Bye, guys.