Writing Effective Goals

 

 

 

 

 

A goal defines where you are going, and helps motivate you along the way.  The steps toward achieving the goal are the roadmap.  Some parts of the map are difficult, but having the end point helps remind you why your hard work is worth it. You can use this format to set any type of goals. At Fit American Families we use it for health, weight loss, exercise, eating healthier-just about everything, even writing our blogs!

Taking the time to put your goals in writing has many benefits:

·        A goal gives you a target to aim for.  Something that is meaningful to you.

·        A goal helps focus your time and energy.

·        A goal can provide motivation, persistence, and desire.

·        A goal can help you prioritize your activities and choices.

Defining your goal takes a little work.  Goals should be SMART:

 Specific.  Be as specific as you can about your goal.  I want to lose 10 lbs in 3 months. I want to have healthier breakfasts everyday.

*Who:      Who is involved?

*What:     What do I want to accomplish?

*Where:    Identify a location.

*When:     Establish a time frame.

*Which:    Identify requirements and constraints.

*Why:      Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

EXAMPLE:  A general goal would be, “Get in shape.” But a specific goal would say, “Join a health club and workout 3 days a week.”

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Measurable - Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.

Define your goal so you can determine if you’ve reached it and/or made steps along the way.  Seeing measurable results will motivate you.

When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.

To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as……

How much? How many?

How will I know when it is accomplished?

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Action-oriented – When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them. Use verbs such as lose weight, run 2 miles, workout 5 days  week, prepare 3 healthy smoothies each week .

 

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Realistic- To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress.

A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labor of love.

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Timely – A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday” won’t work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, “by May 1st”, then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal.
Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.

T can also stand for Tangible – A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses, that is, taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing.

 

 

Go ahead, take a couple minutes to write out one of your goals, whether it’s eating healthier, exercising more or anything you would like to achieve.

Make it a SMART goal.  Now tuck that goal someplace where you can look at it from time to time to remind you of one of your priorities.  You deserve to achieve your dreams!

Allowing Things to Happen

 

 

The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.
~The Daodejing

Post written by Leo Babauta.

This has been what I’ve been learning over the past couple of years. Allowing things to happen.

It goes counter to our usual instincts in Western society — we are doers, creators of our destiny, we make things happen … we don’t wait for it to happen! That’s what I was taught from an early age, in school and by every motivational sports movie I ever watched. So allowing things to happen is not my normal way.

I have never been one to be passive, to let things happen instead of making them happen, to let go of control of things.

But here’s what I’ve been learning:

1. This control we think we have over our lives and our destinies … it’s an illusion. As the guy who had his life turned upside down by a heart attack, the woman who lost her father to death and had to drop everything, the family who lost their home to a hurricane, the entrepreneur that was doing well until the economy collapsed and no one was spending, the hard-working employee who was laid off when the economy tanked, the cyclist who was hit by a car, the car that skid because someone ran onto the road who had been obscured, the mom whose son has autism despite her doing everything right during pregnancy … it happens every day, where we think we’re in control but we’re really not. Do we control all the people around us who affect our lives so intimately? Do we control the overwhelming power of nature? There’s so much out of our control that what we think is control is really an illusion.


2. To control your cow, give it a bigger pasture. This is a great quote from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, talking about controlling your mind. I see the cow and her pasture as a form of allowing things to happen — instead of tightly controlling something, you’re opening up, giving it more room, a bigger pasture. The cow will be happier, will roam around, will do as she pleases, and yet your needs will also be met. The same is true of anything else — stepping back and allowing things to happen means things will take care of themselves, and your needs will also be met. And you’ve done no work.


3. You have less stress, less to worry about. Imagine allowing things to happen naturally, and things work out, and all you did was smile and watch. You don’t have to worry about shaping things, about controlling something that doesn’t want to be controlled. You don’t have to push, and fix leaks, and put out fires. You just let things work on their own. They happen.


4. Things will surprise you. Let’s say you’re allowing something to happen. You might want it to go a certain way, to a certain outcome. That’s your goal. But what if you let go of this idea? What if you say, “I don’t know what will happen.” (Btw, you really don’t.) What if you say, “Let’s see what happens.” Then things will happen, but not the way you planned. The outcome might be completely different than what you’d hoped for. But it can still be great, just different. It might even be wonderful, and surprising. Surprises are good, if we accept that things always change and that change is good.


5. You learn how things work. Instead of trying to make things work the way you want them to work, just watch them work. You’ll learn much more about human nature, about the nature of the world, as you see things work without you controlling it. It might change you.

That’s all very good, Leo, you’re thinking. But that won’t put the food on my table.

Maybe you’re right. And so, don’t let me stop you from what you need to do. Carry on. I’ll just sit back and watch.

Where in the World do I start?

Post written by Leo Babauta.

One of the most frequent questions I get when people read Zen Habits, looking to change their lives, is:

“Where do I start?”

From getting in shape to flossing to getting productive to waking earlier to learning languages and much more … there are so many habits to change that people often become confused, overwhelmed, to the point where they don’t start.

I know, because I’ve been there. For me, before I learned how to change habits, the confusion of where to start resulted in two problems: 1) I would often try too many things at once, because I wanted to change a lot of things; or 2) I would just not even try, because it was too hard to figure out.

How did I solve it? I picked one thing, and just started.

This is what I recommend: pick something fun and easy. One thing. Anything, really. What you pick to start with matters little, because you’ll get to everything you want to work on eventually. Where it does matter is in how difficult the change is — if it’s too hard, you might fail and get discouraged and lose confidence. If it’s easy and fun, you’re more likely to succeed and move on to the next challenge.

That said, looking back on things, I have a few suggestions for great habits to start with. I recommend picking one of the following, depending on how much it appeals to you, and how much fun you might have doing it.

1. A Mindfulness Practice. There are a few good options here: 5 minutes of meditation, a mindful tea ritual, or 5 minutes of mindful eating at one meal per day (do nothing but be mindful as you eat, no distractions like reading or TV). Not only are these beautiful, calming practices, they actually set an amazing foundation for future changes. At the most fundamental level, they are practice for being mindful as you do anything, including undergoing other habit changes. One of the best things I’ve ever done is learning to be more mindful.

2. Simplify. Simplifying practices like decluttering or simplifying your schedule are great ways to create space for the important things in your life. I’ve found that a beautiful, uncluttered space is perfect for other things like exercise, reading, meditation, writing, and so on. Decluttering your schedule (find one thing to eliminate or simplify each day) is a great way to create space for other habit changes to follow.

3. Fun Exercise. What? Exercise can be fun? Well, sure — it is for me! I look forward to exercise, whether because running allows me to clear my head, walking allows me to mull over different ideas, or because working out with a friend is a wonderful way to socialize. If exercise doesn’t seem fun to you, you might just need to find the right partner, coach, team, or game to play. Exercise is a great habit to start with because it makes your whole day better, makes your mind more focused, and gives you the confidence to tackle other habits.

4. A Small Heathy Eating Habit. I love this habit because it makes you feel lighter, healthier, and happier. That change can affect everything else you do. A simple eating habit might be to eat fruit and raw nuts for a snack instead of greasy or sweet snacks, or drinking water or tea instead of soda, or eating veggies instead of something fried or starchy for dinner. Enjoy the cleaner, lighter taste, the lack of heaviness, greasiness and bloatedness you feel afterward. You don’t have to revamp your entire diet — just one small eating change is a great way to start.

What if you want to do all four of these? Pick the one you are looking forward to the most. If there’s a tie, then pick randomly. It doesn’t matter where you start. What matters is that you start.

  

Building your strength in the present moment

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from JC Deen, author of LGN365: A Complete Body-Recomposition Course.

I want you to try something for me. Read the instructions first, and then give it a go.

Instructions:

Close your eyes and be very deliberate with your thoughts. I don’t want you to think about what happened yesterday, or what you plan on doing later today.

Do nothing but focus on your breathing, counting each inhalation and exhalation as 1 breath.

Count  1 … 2 … 3 … and so forth.

Set a timer on your smartphone and do this for the next sixty seconds.

Okay go.

All right, so now that you’re reading again, if you made it the entire minute without interruption, congratulations. You’re doing very well when it comes to giving deliberate focus to your daily tasks and objectives.

However, I imagine your mind wandered far past counting your breaths. If you’re like most people (myself included), you were inundated with thoughts of your to-do list, what you’re going to eat for dinner, that you forgot to put on deodorant, or wondering if you turned off the curling iron at home.

The truth is we hardly ever give all of our attention to the present moment.

This is problematic because we aren’t getting the most out of our work, and we’re robbing ourselves of results later on.

As a fitness coach, I see this in play on a daily basis. When a client comes to me, our conversation is most always about the future – how they want to look and feel on a certain date in the future.

Some of the guys I coach have the goal of a bigger, chiseled physique, while the ladies want to improve their appearance and get back into their skinny jeans.

Or maybe their goal is to improve general health and to simply feel better about themselves.

Regardless of the goal (as there are many), the common theme is being too outcome dependent, which can often overwhelm us. Setting big goals can seem rather daunting, which often leads to fear and procrastination.

Rarely any of us ever focus 100% on the present moment, which is what produces the actual result in the future.

Because of this, I’ve completely changed my approach to the way I work with my clients and my own goal setting.

If we don’t take action now, we’ll settle for nothing later.

The Importance of Now

All we have is this second, and at any given point, it can all end.

So I ask this: ‘Why are we so often caught up in worrying about the future? Why don’t we focus on the now and be deliberate with our actions?’

It’s easy to avoid dealing with the current moment, and putting it off to get lost in time-wasting tasks that aren’t serving us.

However this will never get us the results we want.

So how does one normally reach a goal?

It’s simple. You decide what needs to happen, and then work backward, determining the actions necessary to succeed.

But simple is not always easy.

Some feel we have no control over what happens to us. If this is your belief, then it’s probably real for you.

You can have control over your goals and circumstances if you pay closer attention to each moment.

I got the idea for this article as I was chatting with my friend Roman about our pursuit of strength through barbell training and how our experiences focusing on the moment are very similar.

About three years ago, I was in and out of college, working a job I hated and at 22, completely unsure of what my future would look like.

I lost interest in my studies, but kept going to class and wasting away at work. I was empty, 500 miles from home, and was constantly obsessing about the future. I thought I’d never figure it out.

During this period in my life, I found myself gravitating toward my gym sessions… much more so than before. I was in the weight room when I should’ve been in class taking exams.

This experience was quite liberating. When I was training, I completely forgot about my worries. The gym was the only place I found relief from my daily stresses. All I thought about was how my muscles felt, and can vividly remember the taste of lactate as I finished my grueling workouts.

I absorbed every thought and feeling I experienced during this pursuit of strength. My focus on the present moment gave me control. It gave me purpose.

I eventually dropped out, and found myself even more obsessed with strength and conditioning than I was during my days of high school athletics. Late nights were spent reading books and articles – literally everything I could find about training and coaching.

As a result of this deliberate focus in the gym, I built a physique I was proud of and I soon began helping others do the same.

For the first time in my life, I was focused and living in the now – I was happy again.

I promised myself to always place emphasis on helping others, improving myself, and the pursuit of happiness in my work.

The question I ask myself daily is this: ‘what deserves my attention in this very moment and how can it make mine or someone else’s life better?’

Building Your Strength In The Present Moment

It’s hard to understand just how important this concept is.

This is what I tell my clients: “The only thing you must do today is make every action count. If tomorrow happens to come, then repeat what you did today.”

This helps people take their mind off a goal that might seem very far away.

Give each moment your full attention.

So you want to wear your favorite bikini this time next year? Maybe you want to enter a triathlon in the fall?

Good. Set those goals, and then come back to the present. What can you do right now to ensure you reach your goal?

Start with your first work out. What does the weight feel like in your hands? How do your quads feel as you finish your intervals? How does it feel to record improvements in your training log?

It’s easy to fantasize about the future, but daydreaming is hardly fruitful.

All we have is the task of this current moment – treat it with respect and give it your deliberate attention.

As simple as it sounds, my challenge to you is this: Keep your goals in in mind, but aim to be much more deliberate with your daily actions.

Focus on the tasks you take as you work toward your destination, and be mindful of moment. Absorb everything because the moment will eventually be gone forever.

Read more from JC at his blog, JCDFitness.

Goal Setting: Coming December 2012

 

Goal Setting

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