How bad do you want it? - Your Guide to People, Places & Happenings in NMB

By Nomndeni Motha Most of us have something we say we want, but wanting the outcome and committing to the process are two very different things. In her latest column for 041Online, Nomndeni Motha explores the gap between intention and action, the comfort of always starting tomorrow and the difficult choices real change demands. 'I really want to lose weight.' 'I want to go back to school.' 'I need to start saving.' Most of us have something we've been saying we want for months or even years. One person complains about their stubborn belly fat while ordering another pizza. The next person says they want to study further while the application tab has been open for three months. Another person talks about wanting to save for an emergency fund while convincing themselves that R1,000 is too little to save anyway. This happens to the best of us. We can genuinely want something and still repeatedly behave in ways that take us further away from it. That's what makes change so frustrating. Change is attractive when it's only in our imagination because we romanticise the outcome, not the process. This creates an awkward gap between the desired state and our behaviour. Psychologists describe this as an intention-behaviour gap: having an intention does not automatically translate into doing the thing. That gap is where many goals live for years. The reality is that change is hard Losing weight may mean ditching your favourite comfort foods. It can mean going to the gym when you would rather watch Netflix. A healthy lifestyle is built through small daily choices, like what you buy at the supermarket, what you eat when you're sad and whether you move your body when motivation is nowhere to be found. These are the daily choices that lead to weight loss. In the same breath, wanting a degree and wanting to study are not quite the same thing. One is the result. The other is sitting at a desk after a long day when your brain has already submitted its resignation. It's staying up to read when sleep would be more enjoyable. It's giving up a Saturday night out to prepare for exams. Your body won't visibly transform after tonight's workout. You won't suddenly have a degree because you studied one chapter. The reward for doing the difficult thing is delayed, while the reward for choosing comfort is immediate. This concept of delayed gratification helps explain why a long-term goal can lose an argument to a very convincing box of pizza at 8pm. You can care deeply about your health and still struggle to change how you eat. You can value education and still procrastinate. You can desperately want financial stability and still find spending emotionally rewarding. You might consider yourself someone who is serious about getting healthier. But then you look at your track record over the last month. You trained twice, or perhaps you ordered fast food most evenings. You kept saying you'd start properly next week. Every individual decision had a perfectly reasonable explanation. Work was exhausting. You had plans that weekend. There was a party. You didn't have groceries. Monday was stressful. None of those things make you lazy or a failure. In fact, they are valid. But zoom out far enough and all the explanations lead to a pattern of behaviour that is not aligned with your goals. The danger of constantly starting tomorrow The idea of tomorrow lets us keep the goal without having to experience the discomfort of change immediately. How many times have you said you'll start tomorrow, on Monday or next month? Because we think the future is guaranteed, we can postpone almost indefinitely without ever having to admit that we've stopped pursuing the goal. There is another psychological concept at play here. We tend to imagine our future selves as slightly better behaved than our current selves. This kind of thinking, called future self-optimism, can be beneficial, but it can also be misleading. If your plan only works when you feel motivated, rested and enthusiastic, it is not a good plan. So, how badly do you want it? What are you prepared to do to reach your goals? Not once when you're inspired. Not for the first week of January. Not when life is quiet, your fridge is perfectly stocked, you've had eight hours of sleep and nobody has invited you anywhere. The only way to show how badly you want a goal is by consistently aligning your actions and choices with it.