Tom Rountree DO (00:01.838)
So I've been using a method this past year which has actually helped me to stick to and accomplish a lot of my goals. And I want to cover it here because a lot of times I'll talk about it with my patients but I've never really covered it on the podcast. Now, if you make a goal, like a yearly goal, usually it involves saying something like, I want to lose, you know,
20 pounds or 30 pounds within the next six months. So people will start to work on losing this weight, right? They'll reduce what they're taking in, their caloric intake, and the first two weeks is pretty great for them. They're going really hard and strong and they're like, yeah, I'm accomplishing things. I've lost maybe five pounds maybe by the first two weeks. And then by the third week, something happens.
suffered an illness, they've gone on a work trip, they're going to a party. And then by the fourth week, they've really kind of, this has really dissipated their direction, their goal has really, you know, kind of just gone to ghost land and hasn't come back. And so this is when they come to my office and say, doc, you know, this is what has happened.
And I talk to them about how goals are really kind of external and brittle. In other words, a goal is like, here's my identity and over here is the goal. And these aren't mixed very well, okay? They rely on motivation and usually kind of future discipline, right? And then when life gets busy, goals are usually one of the first things.
Abandon because a goal is not the person practicing that goal. It's not inside their identity. So I'll take another goal. want to lift. Let's say I'll take my own. want to lift 250 pounds by the end of this year. Okay. And that's a number and you know, maybe it's a little bit easier for me cause I've been lifting all my life and you know, maybe I can accomplish it a little bit easier than the normal person, but
Tom Rountree DO (02:25.518)
who's first starting out, but for a person who is first starting out, they may not even know how to actually begin working out. They may not understand like, how do you do periodization? How do you take a deload week? Which is extremely important in order for your muscles to grow and nerves to adapt. And so they...
themselves, maybe they get really great within the first month and they see lots of results, but then by the third month they plateaued out and they don't know how to get past that and they kind of get discouraged. And same thing happens with losing weight. They plateau in the third and fourth month and then they lose the ability or motivation to actually accomplish what they want to get done. So,
Most people, and this is kind of the key to this, most people don't fail their goals, okay? They simply return to their original identity. So they have this identity which has been formed over multiple, multiple years, right? They've grown up in a certain culture, they've experienced certain things in their life which has gotten them to this point. And it's been years, and that's what I tell people. It takes years.
to reverse what is going on. And that's okay. It's fantastic that you've reached this point. It's awesome that you're here, that you're actually considering this and you're a great, fantastic stage of change. But when things get tough is usually when people revert back to their own identity. So how do you, or how do you...
make goals around your own identity. Well, this is the key, right? So you're looking for something that is somewhat in line with your identity and not too far out, but you want to make this goal and you want to achieve it. So this is what's called making an intention. And what is an intention? This is
Tom Rountree DO (04:44.674)
This is what I do. So this is kind of getting more into in line with what I do and how I've used this to accomplish what I want. So an intention is a consciously chosen internal commitment that reflects how a person intends to think, how you want to behave or show up in alignment with your own values. And this is regardless of specific outcomes. So.
you kind of look at it let's break that down a little bit, okay? It's consciously chosen, right? Somebody is not telling you that this is what you should be doing, okay? You kind of start to feel it a little bit on the inside. And it's an internal commitment, okay, that reflects how you intend to think, behave, or show up. And it's in alignment with your values. And so it's...
a little bit more of a direction and not a destination. Okay, achieving a 250 pound bench press is a destination. It's not really who you are, okay? I am a person who works out daily if not weekly or weekly if not daily. And that is more of my own identity. I am that person, okay? I am that person that
does that. And so this is more of a direction, right? So if I'm working out, there's multiple things that I can choose to do to work out. So what this does is actually lower the chance of a barrier happening, okay? And research shows that people who clearly define their intention, especially when they're a little bit specific and a little bit identity-based,
they're significantly more likely to follow through with like, they're more likely to follow through on behaviors such as improving diet, increasing physical activity and practicing better sleep hygiene. And so they act as this cognitive bridge between wanting to change and enacting change. And so let's do a few examples, okay? We're gonna contrast a little bit and.
Tom Rountree DO (07:10.63)
So let's say I want to lose 20 pounds, right? Instead of saying I want to lose 20 pounds, which is the end result.
you say something that creates a semi-principle to fall back on. So I treat my body with respect or better, I eat.
lean meats with whole foods, like whole plant-based foods, okay? So I'm a person who eats lean meats with whole plant-based foods. So that kind of opens it up, right? It's not that you are abandoning that goal, it's that you're changing your narrative about who you are. You're doing a little bit of inception, right, with Leonardo DiCaprio.
And another one would be like, want to grow my business. And that's kind of a goal. I want to have 20 contacts or 20 clients by the end of the quarter, right? 20 extra clients or 20 extra clients by the end of this year. Instead, the goal is, the intention is I work with focus and integrity.
All right, now something comes in and decides to interrupt that focus, you go, no, no, no, I plan to work with focus and integrity. Okay, so now you see like, if something presents itself to interrupt you, like let's say you go out to a restaurant and they're like, would you like this pasta heavy meal?
Tom Rountree DO (09:02.092)
And you go, no, I do not. I am a person who eats lean meats and whole plant-based foods along with that. You go, do you have something in line with that? And you can ask them straight out because this is you. This is your goal. This is who you are. And so ask them straight out, I want this and this is my goal this year. This is my intention this year. And so you can see how it acts as a.
kind of a barrier to outside interruption.
Tom Rountree DO (09:37.366)
Now, the second thing is that if you have strong intentions, this kind of narrows, it narrows the fact that there is this intention behavior gap. Okay, and so what I mean by strong intentions, in order to form strong intentions, you need things like clarity of the intention, right? So you saw how I didn't just.
end with I treat my body with respect when I want to lose 20 pounds. I ended with I am a healthy person who eats lean meats with whole plant-based foods. And so that gives me a little bit more clarity on direction. Okay. And so another strong predictor, and by the way, this is in my newsletter that's actually coming out.
that you can go to my website, you can sign up for. And another strong, how to make another strong intention is you've researched this intention, okay? So as you read, as you listen, even to this podcast, you can see that your brain is starting to change, is starting to incorporate these ideas because you're exposing it to something that you want to do. In other words.
So if you want to lift better, then you will listen to lifting podcasts. Let's say you wanna quit smoking. That's a good one, right? So you're going to pick up an audio book on the dangers of smoking or quitting smoking like Alan Carr's, quitting smoking and vaping. And you're going to listen to that. Or let's say you wanna quit alcohol. You're going to pick up the audio book, A Naked Mind, and you're gonna listen to it. And so...
it's gonna help you build knowledge in the background. And this is what causes you to have stronger intentions and accomplish that intention throughout the year. And these work, like I said before, across multiple health domains. So they actually work across like physical domains. So the clinical and behavioral studies show benefits of intention setting in
Tom Rountree DO (12:01.134)
physical activity adherence, nutrition and dietary consistency, sleep hygiene, preventive health behaviors, stress management practices. And it's not really a, it's not a niche, okay? It's a generalizable behavioral skill that works across these multiple domains. And so that's why it's so important. That's why it's so great because like the next thing you wanna do is X, and Z.
So they reduce, they also reduce reliance on motivation. So, you know, they, in other words, they help automate your decision making, okay? When you form clear intentions ahead of time, like the restaurant example, you've made these before you've went to the restaurant, then you're less dependent on moment to moment motivation or your willpower because it's there.
The saying and the line that you wrote down is there, which I'm going to get to in just second. Writing it down is extremely important. And so, you know, both the moment-to-moment motivation and willpower are like unreliable under stress, fatigue, or even like time pressure. And this is especially important for me because I have a five-year-old son. And one of my goals with him is to...
listen and love my son, listen to, love and play with my son. That's the actual intention for the year. So every time he pushes my patience a little bit because he's doing what his little brain wants to do and having fun, showing me actually how to have fun too, it kind of gets annoying to me. And then I remember that intention because I've revisited it several times.
And once I do that, then I go, yeah, this is how I should behave with my son because this is what I want to do. This is who I want to be. I want to be somebody who love listens to and plays with my son. That's the type of father I want to be. And so now you know what an intention is, okay? An intention allows you to handle all of these things and
Tom Rountree DO (14:30.094)
become the person that you want to be. Not just reach a certain goal, it allows you to become that person. And so I alluded to it before, but why this is really important is...
you need to write these things down, okay? You have to write these things down. And what will happen is, and research shows that if you write something down, you are a lot more likely to stick to it. So that's the important part, is writing these things down. And this is why journaling is a serious part of stress management. Because if you write something down,
then you will stick to it, okay? And if you stick to it, then there is no more cognitive dissonance between you, the way you act, and what you want to do, okay? That's where a lot of stress comes from sometimes, is that you're like, okay, I know I'm supposed to act like this, but I don't, and now I'm stressed out about it. And there is multiple studies showing that journaling really helps change
personal habits. So what does this look like?
So you have a journal and I highly recommend people look into what's called the bullet journal method by Ryder Carroll. And he uses or teaches the intentions based cycle. And the intentions based cycle is where it's four parts, okay? I'm gonna go through each one of them. Let me just give you the overview. So in a journal, you record or log your thoughts, right? Then what you can do is you can go back and look at or study your thoughts.
Tom Rountree DO (16:27.95)
After you do that, you refine and kind of cultivate your thinking. So you look at your thoughts and go, I didn't do or act that way very well, or I didn't do what I wanted to do. So if you keep a short little one-liner, what you did each day, very short, you can look back in time and go, did I accomplish my intentions like for that month? And if you didn't, then you can course correct. In other words, you can cultivate your thinking and you can respond.
and act thoughtfully without judgment. That's the important thing is you don't wanna judge yourself, but you can respond and act thoughtfully. So this starts to cycle over again because now you've recorded and logged that thought. You responded and acted thoughtfully and now that's in your journal. So you go, I accomplished something, it's very cool. So the journal reinforces that intention again. And it creates this self-awareness, it reveals.
patterns, not just ideas, right? And you can't really change what you have it named. So if it's not present in the journal, then the problem is, is you may not even know that it's actually there because you haven't explored it. But once you write it down, you go, okay, I got angry at this point in time when me and my spouse were talking. And then you can drill down in that and go, how do I actually?
how do I actually handle this or what is the trigger that's causing me to do it? What is the thought inside my own head that's causing me to do this? And so once you do that, then you can change what you have named. In other words, what you've written down, you can look at it go, I can change this portion here. And that's what journaling does. So in the Bullet Journal Method, he covers this and says,
Okay, this is the method to do this. And then he carries it throughout the program itself. And it's very short. You don't have to journal for, you know, hour, like 30 minutes a day, right? Like that's almost way too much. I journal maybe five, maybe 10 minutes a day. And then that's it. And I go, okay. And over time, I can see the patterns that I have laid out or done throughout my life.
Tom Rountree DO (18:51.938)
and I can go back and look at it. And I can go, okay, my intention was to love, listen to, and play with my son. And I go back each day of the month and I kind of look, where do we do this, right? And I can see it. And if I haven't, then I go, I need to course correct a little bit. I need to cultivate my thinking and go, what can I do next month? And this is how.
I actually ended him being on the iPad. Because I was like, it's running in the back of my mind. I'm like, is, using iPad. I don't want to use iPad. What do I do to get off of that? And then so I started looking for it, right? Because I wrote it down and I labeled it. And I'm like, this is what's causing me the stress. And so now that I've done that.
Now I can go, okay, what can I replace with that? I'm looking for things in my environment to actually replace the iPad with. And one of those things was Armyman. So we went on vacation recently and he's playing a lot with Armyman. And so now I see a solution. We also play board games. So I replaced it with that. And the idea is that, I'm not hard on myself because he was on too much iPad.
I'm proud of myself because I accomplished something and I actually understood now what the solution to that problem is. Not only that, I was like, okay, we need to do more jujitsu. And so, you know, how do I do that? How do I play with him? Because when I try and tell him to do something, he does not like that. And one of the questions I asked was, hey buddy, what's something that you do not like that I do?
And immediately he says, when you tell me to do stuff. And it makes sense. It's him growing up, you know, in a healthy way and building his own principles and own actions.
Tom Rountree DO (21:01.582)
So this is why journaling is so freaking important. mean, this is something that is profoundly underrated in our society. I didn't know what journaling was probably until maybe high school. And so I think that this is something that should be taught in high school along with the six other pillars of health that I...
discuss on my website and I really think that you know doing this as part of the it's under the stress management pillar of American College of Lifestyle Medicine or Lifestyle Medicine in general and it's something that allows you to course correct when you don't even know you need to course correct. So something really important I would say right now if you have a piece of paper
you know, handy or access to one, I would say write down a certain intention.
Tom Rountree DO (22:09.525)
And what you can do is kind of be like a prompt, okay? You can ask yourself, do you discover your intentions? The health ones for me are a lot easier. want to, this is general, I want to exercise more, I want to sleep more, I want to be more connected, I want to eat healthier, I want to eat lean meats with whole plant-based foods, and I want to avoid toxins like...
smoking, alcohol, marijuana, things like this, okay? So thinking about along your healthy life changes, you can write this down as an intention. So one of the things along with exercise, enjoyable exercise is what do you enjoy doing for exercise? Think about your past when you're in your childhood and go, okay.
here's what I enjoyed is as a child, I'm going to test it out this next month and see if I can stick to it. So let's say like I want to or I liked. I don't know, playing tennis, right? Let's say playing tennis or maybe just walking or jogging. OK, I like going running when I was younger. So now I'm going to go running this next year. So the intention is not
The intention is I want to improve my running time this coming year, or I am working on improving my running time. It's not, I'm going to run for 20 minutes, three days a week. That's the goal, okay? That's the goal. You can set that goal. You can totally set it, but if you...
If you miss a day, then you fall back on the intention and go, okay, I'm going to improve my running time this year. And so the intention itself should be like identity-based. should be, me think about this. So intention should be identity-based, simple and memorable, right? And the fewer intentions you have, the more aligned you can be.
Tom Rountree DO (24:30.198)
So I have six intentions, but some of them are more ones that I've had for several years. I just kind of put it down this year. So one intention is to love, know, listen to him play with my son. The other one is to create magical moments with my wife. The third one is get my purple belt in jujitsu. The fourth is launch my strong
my strength-based training, so introduction to strength-based training, which will help out a lot of my patients. I think fifth one is grow the podcast, and six is like stay away from alcohol. And I've had that last one for like years. So what I would say is take out the sheet of paper, write one down, and then also look into
bullet journal method or journaling in general, because many people don't know how to start out a journal. That's a common question I get. So I would say look into the bullet journal method and it's on YouTube under writer Carol. And it's not fancy. Like you don't have to draw these things. You don't have to put a bunch of things in the journal. That can lead to burnout and you stopping journaling. It's basically very short and simple. it's not, the journaling is not about productivity. It's about clarity.
It's about understanding that, okay, here is something that I'm doing or something that's in my life and do I want to cultivate and maybe change that? So create an intention for this coming year, maybe two to three of them and write it down so you can flip back to it and review it at regular intervals in order to keep yourself aligned.
accomplish what you want and
Tom Rountree DO (26:34.252)
get good stress by working on accomplishing what you want and not bad stress. That's what I recommend to help you keep your focus and accomplish what you want this coming year. So thanks so much for tuning in and I hope you have a wonderful, happy and healthy new year.
