a goal without a plan is just a wish – motivational handwriting on a napkin with a cup of coffee
What you focus on is often what you achieve. It’s like any type of travel, when your focus or destination is a specific city or location, it determines the path you take. In other words, your goals determine what you do on a daily basis and what you do consistently can change your future. If you’re not happy with your health, how you look or how you feel, repeating the patterns of the past won’t change that. When you set a new goal, you also create a new path to achieve that goal.
You also need to be specific about what you want.
You can’t just make vague goals. They have to be specific. Just like traveling, you don’t book tickets on a flight for someplace west or point your car in a direction and keep on driving if you have a job interview in a certain town. You name that town as your destination and then figure out how you’re going to get there. Do you want to lose ten pounds? Have enough energy and stamina to run a mile or walk five? When you make your goal specific, you’re half way to achieving it.
You need to make your goal realistic and provide a time limit.
Maybe you’d like to lose weight and need to shed 90 pounds. A realistic goal would be to lose that weight over eleven months or a year’s time or lose two pounds a week or eight pounds a month. An unrealistic goal would be to shed 90 pounds in a month. A goal also needs to function within a time frame to achieve it. If you don’t set a specific time, you’ll be setting your goal for “some time” and some time never comes. You’ve turned a goal into a wish.
If your goal is to have more energy or lose weight, you need to identify and do the things to achieve it.
Just saying you want to lose weight or increase your energy level isn’t enough. It’s not a goal, but a wish if it isn’t backed by steps that can provide that change. Creating a path or map to achieve your goals is the key. If you want to lose weight, learning healthier ways to eat and starting a program of exercise is the only healthy way to achieve it. Make the steps specific and create a way to measure your progress. If it’s weight loss, it might be the number of pounds you lose each week.
- Long term goals need to be broken down to multiple short term goals, such as changing a 90 pound weight loss into losing two pounds a week for 45 weeks.
- Breaking a larger goal down to smaller goals provides more motivation, since you get to achieve those goals quicker. It also can help you make changes if you find your present program isn’t effective.
- Always track your progress. If you’re exercising, track the number of repetitions you can do, how far you can run or even your measurements. Keeping track helps you see your progress.
- No matter what your goal in life, fitness or otherwise, it normally requires you change some of your behaviors. There’s a saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different outcome. That’s true about achieving goals.
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