How to Set Better Goals
How to Set Better Goals
If you've ever tried to achieve any type of goal you probably know just how difficult it is to stay motivated in the long term. Initial excitement can wear off, and any progress made early on can be lost as we lose interest. This can be a real issue in a couple of ways. Firstly, if a goal is going to take a long time, losing motivation part way is a sure fire way not to complete it. Secondly, we practice not completing our goals, tasks, projects etc. This in itself can become a habit, making it more likely we won't complete our next goal and so on until our mindset changes and we feel like a failure.
The question then is, how do you stay motivated in the long term?
Short Term Works...Sometimes
If you've ever looked into getting a coach or training at a facility, you might have seen many short term challenges available. I personally have seen anything from 14 days to 12 weeks (I even ran a 6 week challenge in the early days of the business). Depending on the coach or the facility, there is a good chance these will work for you.
It makes sense why they work; make a major change to our life and we become more aware of things. We become more aware of the food we eat, the training we're doing, the people we're training with. It's all so fresh and new. Our awareness is heightened, our motivation is stoked, and we make it happen.
Like everything though, we acclimatise to things. We start to become comfortable to the point where change requires us to shake things up in a major way again. This is compounded because we never had a long term plan anyway. The result is life starts to happen (as it usually does dammit!) and we start to wane. We start to prioritise other things until we're back to where we started. This doesn't take away from the efforts or things we achieved during that time, but it does mean we have to do it all again.
So we end up on this up and down roller coaster of starting and stopping, getting results and losing them again.
The results we achieve also require just as much time and effort to maintain, often more, because once again life gets in the way. Whereas we had one goal to lose a certain amount of kilos and we focused intently just on it, now we start to focus on other things, and the balance of maintaining our results while do other things becomes much harder.
If you choose to set a short term goal, it's important to set a new goal as you are reaching the end date of your first goal. As a example, if you were doing a 12 week challenge for example, it would be best to set a new goal based on your results from the challenge at the start of week 11. This would ensure you have a plan and some carry over. Otherwise it's easy to get to the end of the challenge and just end up drifting into somewhat of a waste land where you're lost on what your next step should be to stay motivated.
Start With a Purpose
Why do you want to achieve your goal?
Why is it important to you?
How will you feel if you don't achieve it?
These are seemingly simple questions, but often overlooked when it comes to setting goals. We understand the what (that's the actual goal), who will achieve, where and when, but why? Why does it even matter?
This line of questioning is key to keeping your motivation long term. Yes you want to lose 5 kilograms, but why? For your health? But why do you want to get healthy? Why is that even an issue? Getting healthy might seem like a good enough reason to lose 5 kilograms, but don't forget that people are happy to not be healthy for years and years. We need to dig deeper into the reason behind our goals to keep us going.
Finding your purpose, or why for your goals can be done using the 5 Why's Exercise. Here's an example:
I want to lose weight. Why do you want to lose weight?
I just don't feel very attractive at this weight. Why don't you feel attractive at that weight?
I can't wear my old clothes, or dress up and go out. Why is wearing those clothes or going out important to you?
My wife and I used to go out a lot when we were first dating, but now we don't. Why is that an issue for you?
It seems like the magic is gone. Why does that bother you?
I miss those times. With the kids it's busy and over-scheduled, and I worry my wife doesn't find me attractive anymore.
Of course this is a fictional situation, but you can see how you can easily go from wanting to lose weight (remember, there are plenty of things we want in life, but never pursue) to a deeper meaning of why someone wants to lose weight. This is an exercise you can do yourself, or ask a friend to run you through the 5 Why's Exercise with this example as a guide.
This may seem like a lot of work just to understand a simple goal, but it is also the same process you can use to achieve a big goal. Therefore it is a process to practice all the time. Try it out for your next fitness goal, or any other type of goal you know will take time to achieve.
Until next time,
Marco
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