New Year's Day is more than a month away, but I'm already getting excited about those New Year's goals.

How about you?

Welcome to Walking as Fitness.

This is a podcast of action, providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made to yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013, averaging about 21,000 steps a day.

I'm walking right now, and I would love to have you join me for the next 10 minutes.

When I start thinking about 2023, I get excited about the possibilities, those things that I would like to see changed, some

transformation I would like to see, some forward progress in other areas, and the new year feels

like an invitation, January 1st feels like an invitation to make those changes because the new year is a

blank slate, it's an empty canvas, it's filled with possibilities, and I want to take advantage of those.

The funny thing though, the irony is that when I look back on my life and consider all those New Year's resolutions that I've set,

I don't think a single one has really brought about life-changing transformation.

I think the biggest goals that I've set and reached have actually started somewhere else on the calendar.

Probably random days like July 13th or, you know, but still January 1st and a brand new year

feels like an invitation to at least consider those areas in my life that I would like to change, maybe even need change.

The other thing is over the last handful of years, I've really changed the way that I've approached goals.

Instead of focusing on the end result, now I'm much more focused on the process,

the consistent daily, weekly habits that are going to get me to that end result.

So it's the difference between a fitness goal and a fitness promise.

Fitness goal is the end result. Maybe you want to lose

some weight, change some health metrics that are important. But a fitness promise is the process

of how you're going to get there, the commitment that you're going to make on a consistent basis.

...