Resolutions, Goals, and Realities

It’s week one of 2026, and that means everyone is talking about the annual ritual of goal setting. The most common theme I’ve heard in the barbershop is, “I want to take fitness a little more seriously and start working out.” Usually this leads into a conversation about how I work out 6 days a week and the inevitable question, “How do you do it?”

The short answer is, I didn’t start last week. The longer answer is that I made a decision about what kind of person I hoped to become when I made the following statement.

The person I am in my 30’s will determine who I become in my 40’s.

I said this to myself sometime around 2016. You see, I never cared about fitness, I was 140 lbs on a good day and was a stick of a frame. Meanwhile, my wife has had chronic issues with her back and hips that have given her mobility issues throughout our relationship. One day, she fell and needed my help getting up. I found out in the moment that my tiny frame was physically incapable of helping her up to her feet. In my defeat, I wound up buying her a cane so she could be consistently supported when she needed it, but internally I was destroyed. Male stereotypes aside, there is nothing I have experienced more emasculating than being unable to help your partner, and recognizing that it will only get harder as you age.

I decided that I needed to change. I needed to be the person who was able to help my wife, however that looked. This change of self would require me to make changes to my routine, as well as how I saw myself. Things that I had once seen as impossible became things that I simply acknowledged would be difficult. I bought a pair of exercise bikes and make a my first change by jumping on twice a week. Twice became three times, and eventually four, but pretty soon I was adding yoga and core exercises into my routine. Before too long, I had boxing gloves and a bag in my backyard, and I had given aikido practices with a staff a bit of focus.

5 years later, I now wake up every morning at 5:30. I make my protein shake, my pre-workout, and I spend the first hour of my day lifting weights and building strength. None of these practices came from the straightforward goal to get in shape, but instead, they came from a shift in how I identified myself as a person. I started seeing myself as the person that I wanted to become, and my daily habits followed the pursuit of that person.

The person I see myself working towards is someone who will age gracefully. This is not a goal for 2026, it’s a mindset that I carry forward. It requires me to focus on my physical strength and capabilities, prioritizing my mental health, eating clean foods, getting good sleep, and reducing stress in places I can eliminate it. I’ve made a lot of progress in my efforts, and I have been able to finally kick self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, but I would argue that I can go further. Even though there’s more work left to do, I think that adding new elements into an existing routine is much easier than saying, “I want to tone up my stomach.”

If nothing else, it seems more attainable and sustainable.