What Is Your Sentence?

“In 1962, Clare Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. “A great man,” she told him, “is a sentence.” 

Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.”

Franklin Roosevelt’s was: “He lifted us out of a Great Depression and helped us win a world war.”

Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph.

You don’t have to be a president to learn from this tale.  One way to orient your life toward greater purpose is to think about your sentence. 

Maybe it’s: “She taught two generations of children how to read.”

Or “He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults.”

Or “She invented a device that made people’s lives easier.”

As you contemplate your purpose, begin with the big question.”

The above is a passage from Drive, a book about motivation and what drives people to succeed. 

In our health coaching practice, we emphasize a change in IDENTITY & ENVIRONMENT as two necessary pieces to behavior change.

Identity: be and do what healthy people do.

Environment: eliminate the obstacles from sight, place all the helpful tools you can in your line of sight.

A mission sentence, like Clare Luce perfectly articulates above, is a simple exercise to establish the person you want to be when it comes to your health and wellness…your health identity.

What is your sentence…for health in 2021?

*…“2021 was the year I started following a training program and stopped working out randomly.”

“She stopped getting drunk in 2021.”

“He set a 600+ calorie metric per session through heart rate monitoring in 2021.”

“She deadlifted twice her body weight this year.” (any takers?)

“I took my kids hiking once a month for 6 months straight.”  

Sidenote: *…There’s a difference between training and working out, one’s an actual process with a goal in mind, the other is inconsistent, random acts.  It’s like the difference between reading actual books (pro tip: curate a reading list) and reading headlines and a few paragraphs off your favorite media news site…which one of those two actually yield something of value?

The mission sentence starts at the end…and then allows you to reverse engineer and work backwards.  I love that. 

One sentence is simple, brief and easy to recall. Before Resistance kicks in (typically Friday, Saturday, Sunday) refer to your sentence, and stay on task.

So what drives people?  Based on the sociological and psychological findings in Drive…it IS NOT external rewards (money, title, recognition) or punishment for missing goals.

So following Instagram fitness model accounts, juice cleanses and starving yourself Monday-Thursday might not be the solution to getting healthy… sticks and carrots theory is out.

The research says it is: 1) purpose, 2) autonomy and 3) mastery.

Purpose.  Find a deeper meaning in your goals…i.e. feeling energized every day, the ability to deliver experiences to your kids, not being a burden on others.

Autonomy.  Create independence inside and outside the gym.  Your training program should be a supplement to an active lifestyle.  Think critically and educate yourself. Trying to out-exercise your wine, muffin and latte habit with another Peloton ride ain’t it.  I personally enjoy a balanced program of Hybrid training, progressive strength training, low intensity jogging and walking.

Mastery.  Pursue proficiency of movement patterns, exercises, yoga poses, running technique, sport skills like golf swings and chase progressive loading and personal bests in weight training.  This all takes time. Hint: it’s in the years.

What Is Your Sentence? 

Will it sustain you through the Dips and all the Resistance?