How can you ensure you get the most out of your workout, while also increasing the likelihood you go back the next day? Easy. Think about how awesome you're going to feel after. It's called "Post-Exercise Affective Expectation," but it's a lot easier than it sounds.

​I'm a huge believer in the Quantified Self. The more information we have about our exercise, sleep, nutrition, and how we feel, the better we are able to learn how these things interact. Fitness technology has allowed us to track all of these things, but fail to tell us what to do with them. Below is a case study regarding how I use my experience in exercise psychology to apply the information received from this technology.

The next "skill" I'm going to discuss isn't so much a skill as it is a mindset. An approach to life. Like most things, this doesn't apply just to sports, but facet of life. In my experience, this is the greatest predictor of success there is. It's what sets the best apart from the rest. It's what drives the constant need for improvement-- that push to become the best you can be. It's what we call "The Champion's Mindset."

Last week, we talked about confidence, why it's important, and sources of confidence. Today, I tell you  an easy trick to increase your confidence. The easiest way to become more confident is to pretend that you are confident. While I use the term "fake it" in reality it's not fake. It may seem that way starting out, but soon the changes to our confidence are real, and easily achieved.

I spend a lot of time working out with friends, trying to instill in them the passion I have for physical activity and self-improvement. In our training, I will often issue challenges. If they think they can do 10 reps of an exercise, I will tell them to do 15. Not because I want to see them fail; just the opposite, in fact. I want to see them succeed beyond what they believed they could do. Simply by having the belief that they can do more, I am able to help them knock out those last couple of reps. If you tell yourself you can only do 10, you will only do 10. But if you tell yourself you can do more, you can. It’s all about believing in yourself.

To me, belief is the most fundamental building block of action. We can want to do something, we can plan to do something, but if we don’t believe we are capable of doing it, we never will. Who is going to exert time, money, and effort on something they don’t believe they can do? Who is going to continue going when their body is telling them to stop, when their legs and feet hurt, and their lungs are screaming? Those people who, with all of their being, are confident that they are capable of overcoming the obstacle in front of them, and any hindrance they will encounter.

So, last time, we came up with our outcome goal, the ultimate goal we want to achieve. How do we achieve that goal? An effective goal won’t just tell us where we want to go, but how we get there. Just like you wouldn’t set off on a cross-country road trip without a map (or GPS, for the younger generation), you shouldn’t try to make a change to yourself without understanding how, and what it takes, to get there. Process goals act as that road map to tell us how we achieve our ultimate Outcome goal.

So you want to make a change. How do you know where you want to go?

Goals are the fundamental building block of change and self-improvement. As everyone knows, goals tell us where we want to go. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. Whether it’s running a mile or a marathon, setting a goal provides us with a clearly defined thing that we want to achieve. Everyone has some goal they would like to achieve. Let me help you realize your goal.