LEAVING OLD GOALS & MOTIVES BEHIND

Check out the audio version on our Substack.

Today’s topic is one of the less discussed in the sport and exercise psychology field, and that is the need to leave behind old goals, motives and approaches for physical activity that no longer work for your current situation. This is a transition familiar to people across the spectrum - from those who exercise for their health to elite athletes.

Life has its chapters - leaving home and starting work, becoming a parent, moving house or country, relationship endings, chronic illnesses, injuries, changing jobs or career, retiring from sport, moving up a level in sport, existential crises, rapid-onset psychological change following adverse events, age-related milestones…. Such new chapters often mean different opportunities, schedules, priorities, responsibilities, physical and mental capacities, interests and resources, all of which means we are required to adapt or to completely change things like physical activity.

So when life demands different things of us in these times, we try to change what we do accordingly… but we don’t necessarily move on psychologically. We may leave behind our previous goals or activities practically speaking, sometimes out of absolute necessity, but we can still find ourselves yearning for what we had, constantly mulling over whether we can find a way back.

For example, athletes moving up to higher levels may wish they could feel the same enjoyment and liberation that they used to, or keep their status as the big fish in a small pond. Others wish they could still pursue their competitive goals unhindered, having had to make new choices about how they spend their time and energy. Exercisers long to spend every weekday evening at the gym again, go for a run whenever they want or do things they can no longer physically do.

Some people don’t ponder their past activities so explicitly, but instead unwittingly carry forward old attitudes and expectations that were suited to another time or activity, hampering their experience of the present activity. Alternatively, others may wander about in the metaphorical wilderness, wanting but lacking a new direction and feeling rudderless and stagnant. Nothing really motivates them anymore, but they crave something to get motivated for.

Like many people, I’ve sat on this merry-go-round repeatedly. Most recently this has been a consequence of pregnancy (which I will cover in another post as it’s a topic in and of itself), but in the past it revolved around temptations to return to competitive running. I wanted to see if I could overcome the mental barriers I faced back then and deliver the performances I’m actually capable of. I also missed the buzz of track sessions and races, the adventure of seeing how fast I could go, and the community at my athletics club. This is still something that plays on my mind.

At the beach in Ogmore-On-Sea for a training weekend

But of course returning to that situation isn’t simple - I have prioritised other activities like strength training, Muay Thai and sprinting for years now, which was a deliberate decision I made given where I had arrived physically and psychologically with competitive running. Some of that would definitely have to give if I returned to my running goals, and all the running would likely hinder my progress in those other activities, creating a conflict. My day-to-day life and responsibilities also look very different now, so fitting in the amount of training I used to do would be a stretch. Here I’m bumping up against a reality we often don’t want to face: we can’t have it all, and everything we say “yes” to requires a “no” (to use the wise words of a dream group friend).

So then I tend to return to the place of “what I’m doing now is right”, but part of me still can’t quite let the running stuff go and the merry-go-round continues.

How do we end up here?

There are several potential scenarios in which we may struggle to move on from the past. Some will be unique to the individual, but I’ll discuss a few common ones here.

The first is the confrontation with developmental shifts which can be naturally challenging. Consider the goals of optimal aesthetics or peak objective performance - these are often in the forefront of young people’s minds, and more readily available for them to pursue for a number of reasons. Come middle age though, these goals become more tenuous and things like longevity, energy and functionality become more prominent. Nonetheless, many people who are approaching the age of “no longer a young adult”, whenever you believe that to be, find themselves struggling to let go of a sole and intense focus on their physique and objective performance, or ways of approaching physical activity that don’t do any good for where they are wanting to go in life. It can be tricky to simply magic up a new focus, and if you’ve been “performance-at-all-costs” you might struggle to be motivated to do anything at all in the absence of those same performance goals. Equally, people approaching older age struggle with the reality that there are some things they can pretty much be 100% certain they will never do, at all or again, which is a hard pill to swallow.

A second scenario is where you chose or were forced to actively withdraw from previous activities or circumstances in an unsatisfactory manner. Maybe you picked up an injury that finished your chances of shooting for international level; you burnt out and lost the love or confidence for your activity; you faced mental barriers you just couldn’t overcome and decided to quit. The decision to stop was inevitable, yet somehow unsatisfactory because you felt you had more to give - you’ve got unfinished business and find it difficult to put that time of your life to bed.

A third scenario is when our activities come to an end because of significant life events that change our circumstances (in either positive or negative ways). The activity itself doesn’t come to any kind of unsatisfactory end, yet it’s common to have unfinished business here too and you may have struggled to reorient yourself after the change. Maybe you now lack time for your previous activity schedule given your work hours or parenthood, or something major happens to you that has you questioning what you really care about and how you want to spend your time. Perhaps you relocate and what you previously did doesn’t fit so seamlessly into your routine right now because your environment, support network and resources have changed. Or one more - maybe you are happy with your decision to switch activities, but you find yourself approaching them with attitudes or expectations that are only fit for the old ones.

Not everyone struggles to navigate such scenarios - some people are able to let go of the past and move on, adapting to their new reality and shifting their mindset accordingly. However where people do struggle to move on, there is often at least one (or sometimes several) of 3 psychological patterns underpinning the struggle.

1) Existential angst

I’ll start with the most universal pattern, something almost all of us will experience more generally during our lives, and that is the experience of existential angst.

Existential angst is a term to describe all of the psychological discomfort activated by confrontations with our nature and reality as human beings. For example, transitions like the above bring us face-to-face with the unavoidable limitations we face in our lives, the fact that there are tensions between different things we care about that are hard to balance, and irreconcilable conflicts we experience about what to do with our time.

Our lives, available time and resources are all finite, which leaves us with endless decisions to make about what to prioritise and how to approach what we do. Choosing one thing means sacrificing another, and sometimes the choice you make may seem obvious (e.g. choosing to earn a living instead of spending all of your time running) because it’s driven by a direct survival need, but survival isn’t all there is to it. According to thinkers from the existentialist school of thought, we have an innate need to create meaning and purpose in our lives to combat the chaos of reality - a cornerstone of psychological stability. We want to feel as if we are doing something that is important and worthwhile, and just because we need to earn money to survive, that doesn’t mean our yearning for a higher purpose goes away. Likewise, just because 2 things can’t co-exist or be done together doesn’t mean we want either thing any less! We carry on wanting. In fact, because of this urge to make our lives count, there is an underlying sense of anxiety about not making the right decision about how to spend our time, whether we are aware of it or not. There’s also a sense of loss when we feel that we can’t live out our potential. “Will I regret all this later?”

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

This explains why we struggle to manage conflicts over mutually exclusive activities, ways of living or goals, and to balance tensions between competing priorities. Even more straightforwardly, life transitions (whether natural or forced, positive or negative) are inherently disorganising, psychologically speaking. Adapting to a life change requires significant psychological change that is costly in terms of both energy and clarity moving forward. For example, maybe you still technically have time to exercise having landed a full-time job, but you might find it difficult to feel connected to your exercise motives in the face of this new routine and everything that comes with it. Your brain is busy trying to figure out where you’re going, what your priorities should be and how to solve the problems in front of you. And maybe you’re changing and you don’t realise it.

Finally, coming face to face with our mortality via ageing can be confronting, depending on our previous exposure to such topics and our life outlook. Most of us don’t give much thought to the time-limited nature of everything we do in our lives, so when we are faced directly with the reality that some things will cease to be it can be jarring. It isn’t just the much-loved activity or experiences that we lose - it’s also psychological stability, because how we regularly spend our time feeds into our understanding of ourselves and the world. All of that needs updating when we move to a new chapter.

2) The puer aeternus and puella aeterna archetypes

A specific but surprisingly common pattern responsible for the struggle with such scenarios is that of the puer aeternus or puella aeterna archetype.

The term “archetype” describes a psychological pattern that is universally observed across cultures, for which we all have the potential. Just like reflexes are built into our DNA, so are archetypes - they are like blueprints for universally recognised patterns of behaviour, attitudes and perceptions. Their names usually reflect prototypical characters who embody the relevant behaviours - think the hero, sage, everyman, wise woman, lover, trickster, warrior, etcetera. We all know roughly what it means to be heroic, wise, or loving, for example - they are modes of operating that organise our behaviour and that we can take up. The details will shift according to context, but there is a basic pattern underlying the actions and ways of being of each archetype.

The puer aeternus translates to “the eternal boy” (or eternal girl, in the puella’s case). I won’t dive into full details here for efficiency purposes, but if you want to learn more check out this post from my other Substack. Some relevant aspects of the puer/puella are the wish to remain young forever (literally and metaphorically) - a reluctance to contend with the world as it is, ground oneself in reality, and accept the setting aside of some potentials so others can be lived out. We see the negative side of the puer/puella in the tendency to look back on the past with rose-tinted glasses and yearn for a more hedonic and exciting existence than we perceive to have in the humdrum of our current everyday life. The puer/puella is very good at recognising when something they are already doing is engaging and meaningful, throwing all of their energy into it, but not so good at recognising the potential for meaning in committing to more sophisticated or reality-based pursuits in the future.

Image from: https://pixabay.com/users/ninikvaratskhelia_-15913392/

How is this relevant? We all have to drop things from earlier stages of life, be those attitudes, behaviours, activities, goals or priorities. This is part of the flow of life - as we age and our circumstances change, life demands different things of us and what is available to us changes. This means we have to change, which requires us to sacrifice the old for the new - many things we used to do or value will have run their course at some point. But like with existential tensions, this doesn’t mean we stop wanting those things. The puer/puella aspect of us naturally wants to remain in that almost paradisal state of being full of youthful potential, having adventures chasing performance goals and spending our time exactly as we please.

I often daydream about the idea of going back to the training situation I had with my athletics group - training twice a day, meeting up and going on training trips, immersing myself in the fascinating world of endurance science and nutrition, and spending a lot of time fantasising about the times I could achieve. It’s all very exciting and enticing to think about - it makes a lot of what I’m doing now feel utterly boring. But it’s not real life anymore, and if I were to allow that perspective to consume me I would be missing everything meaningful and fruitful about the present and future, no matter how different or “limited” it is.

This is even more potent if our physical activities once served the purpose of temporarily compensating for perceived flaws or feelings of inadequacy. Sport and exercise can really seem to hold the promise of one day making us feel accepted or finally “good enough”. If this is the case, such activities will continue to feel somehow addictive - again, they provide a sense of psychological stability and positive potential the puer/puella yearns for.

3) Identity

The role of our sense of identity - who we think we are - in psychological stability and well-being should not be underestimated. For a lot of people, physical activities feed strongly into their sense of who they are, and when this goes by the wayside for whatever reason they can find themselves feeling lost and somewhat disconnected from life. “If I’m not doing that/performing like that anymore, who am I?” This is particularly potent if we have a whole community or social group based on our activities that we then feel we can’t connect with in the same way.

There is a bit of a theme running throughout these 3 patterns, which is stability. Having a clear sense of who we are and what we are doing in life gives us clarity and reduces uncertainty, meaning life seems less stressful and more coherent. We feel satisfied with what we’ve done each day, at least relatively speaking. And if this identity links us to a community, even better - there are few things we find more meaningful than connecting to like-minded others. However, this can get undermined when our circumstances change, leaving us with the task of reorienting ourselves and reshaping our purpose.

What are the consequences?

It’s no wonder then that we struggle to let go of our past goals, motives and activities. Whatever the reason for your taking up a seat on this merry-go-round, the “unlived life” keeps knocking at the door, and we wish we could slow down time, but we can’t.

However, if we’re not careful we can stay stuck in a sort of limbo, hanging onto something that is no longer working or realistic. We may end up trying to bring the old goal or activity back to life, and sometimes that’s workable if we can pursue it in a way that aligns with our current rhythms…. But often it doesn’t so it turns out to be futile, or we constantly ruminate about going back to it but never act on it because we know it isn’t realistic. We may try to move forward with a new goal, but find ourselves caught up in past attitudes that don’t fit the new goal (e.g. perfectionism or competitiveness).

The cost to holding onto past goals, motives or identities like this is that it always poses some resistance to what we’re trying to do now which can stop us committing to and finding our real enjoyment and meaning in that. In other words, we allow the past to take life out of the present.

Mythologically speaking this is a classic case of the death of the king or queen - the “ruling principle” has perished and needs replacement. In one of my favourite books, Maps of Meaning, Peterson describes this kind of scenario as “worshipping a dead god” - hanging onto an obsolete belief system in the hope that it will provide us with what we want, but there is no life - potential - left in it.

Photo by Alexey Savchenko on Unsplash

Now, there’s no reason we can’t reflect on what was so meaningful about our past endeavours or situations and consider how to reshape those to better suit the present, holding onto some of the important elements. But it’s important to be aware of when we’re yearning to go back to the exact same situations which won’t work with what we’re now doing. And the reality is it can be difficult to recreate some of those things - for example, I found my past running situation to be uniquely transcendent because of a specific combination of factors that I’m unlikely to be able to replicate again. Or more accurately, I am unwilling to replicate them again given other priorities. So if we are to bring forward elements of the past, we must do so judiciously and pragmatically and be honest with ourselves about what we really want given our limited choices.

What do we do?

If you find yourself stuck in this cycle of wanting to go back to something you can’t go back to or no longer fits your current life, or maybe you feel directionless, there is an antidote but it’s a bit of a journey that proceeds in overlapping stages.

Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge that you’re experiencing a loss. It’s natural to yearn for good things that we no longer have - if it was an important part of your life, you’ll miss it, and it isn’t as simple as logically deciding “oh well, that’s done” and manually gaining a sense of closure. If only our brains worked in such a simple manner. Instead there’s the need to mourn - truly moving on means allowing the feelings that exist about no longer being in your previous situation, no matter how uncomfortable they are. And you can use these uncomfortable feelings to establish some important things about yourself:

• What was so compelling and important to you about your previous activity, approach or goals (or however you want to describe the thing you are missing)? Try to dig beneath the superficial or practical details - for example, if you found chasing times really exciting, what about that was so exciting? What processes lay underneath that and gave it its magic?

• What do you feel you are missing out on now that your circumstances have changed? This is a broad question so write down anything that comes to mind - relaxation, mood boosts, body image improvements, social connection, energy, strength….

• If your activity/approach felt integral to who you are, what about it did that for you? Why is that something that makes you you?

• Is there anything you feel will never be, because of your change in circumstances? What is that, and why is it important?

• What unfinished business do you feel you have, if any? What still nags at you about it?

The task from here is to consider what might allow you to bring any positive elements of your previous circumstances forward into what you do now, where realistic. You can also consider whether there other avenues through which you can channel the psychological forces that made your previous situation so engaging and meaningful. Having a positive future direction is just as important as coming to terms with the past. There are so many different reflective activities you can do to achieve this that go beyond the scope of this post - if you are interested, consider becoming a paid subscriber (for whom I take requests for extra posts) or getting in touch if you want help working actively on this.

Secondly, it’s worth backtracking and asking yourself why you took a different path. As I mentioned above, sometimes our new direction really is forced, but if it wasn’t entirely involuntary it’s worth reflecting on what happened.

• What took me forward to something else?

• What happened to the previous version of me? Did I outgrow it or did it get buried under the challenges or just life?

• Did the activity lose its energy or pull for some reason?

• Did I really have to let my approach/activity/goals go, or did I struggle to adapt to my new circumstances? Was it that it wasn’t going to fit anyway, or did I just struggle with the transition?

• Am I yearning for something genuinely real from the past, or am I just unhappy with what I am doing in the present?

Thirdly, moving forward means seeing the positive and potential in the present and future. The quote I believe is attributed to John Rockefeller comes to mind: “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” Now you might be wondering “how on earth is my current situation supposed to be better than my past situation if I am unhappy with it?” It certainly might feel like you are downgrading, regressing, giving things up or “stepping back”, particularly if you are bumping up against the limitations of life such as ageing or having to quit an activity due to injury. But that’s in the context of your previous situation. There are genuine physical regressions or declines that we go through, but a lot of the way we experience that is subjective. For example, there is so much negativity around ageing in the West that we entirely miss out on the potential there is in gaining life experience and moving on. Every new chapter can be an upgrade if you choose to make it so, but that’s the challenge (and not an easy one to navigate). I recommend James Hollis’ books about meaning and the second half of life if you are struggling with age-related challenges - they are very good at encouraging you to reflect on the big question of “what is there for me here, now and in the future?”

With all of this, bear in mind that there is no way of manually figuring out and forcing an answer – you have to sit with it for a bit and let it simmer over time. I hope this has been thought-provoking, and feel free to get in touch with feedback or questions.

Chloe Psychology of Movement