This month we have been discussing “Creating the Life You Want”. In our first blog post, we discussed setting the foundation for change by forgiving yourself. We discussed the importance of being kind and realistic with yourself in the process of forgiving your self. In our second blog post of the month, we highlighted this process through a book review on Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming. In this blog post, we plan on getting down to the details of how you determine and achieve the life you want also known as goal setting.
Goal setting in and of itself sounds relatively easy. You determine a goal and set that as your goal. Many of us do this as part of our yearly routine through new year’s resolutions. However, many of us also find ourselves coming up short and not reaching the goals that we have set for ourselves. As briefly discussed in our first blog post, often we set unrealistic goals and then become discouraged when we do not meet our unrealistic goals.
How do we know if our goal is unrealistic? In our first blog post we used an example of someone who was not going to the gym at all and then set a goal of going to a gym five days a week for one hour a session. This is a change from 0 minutes of exercise to 300 minutes of exercise per week. While it is possible, it is a big increase from your normal activities. While you may be able to make a 300 minute adjustment for the first week, you may quickly find yourself not meeting the mark and becoming discouraged.
For those of us who set the annual goal to lose weight, we often set new year’s resolutions which include increased exercise with diet change. We maybe maintain the new diet and exercise plan for a week or two, but then slowly and surely begin to revert to our old ways. Why does this happen? In short, we attempted to make too many changes at one time. Completely overhauling your life is a difficult task and while it may start of great, it is usually not sustainable.
If you cannot define your goal, how do you know when you have achieved it?
Before we go into great detail about breaking goals into achievable increments, we should start with how to operationally define your goals. This may sound fancy, but it is really about taking some time to really think about your goal.
I often ask my client’s the “magic question”: “If you were to wake up tomorrow and someone had waved a magic wand and ______________ was no longer a problem. How would you know _________ had changed? Would you feel different? What would be different in your life?”
This may seem like odd questioning, but the purpose of the question is to get you to think about how you define the problem in your life through your experience (your feelings, how the problem manifests in your everyday life, etc.) and how to measure change.
For example, if your goal is weight loss. You may notice that your weight had changed on a scale. You may notice that your clothing is fitting looser. You might feel more happy or confident in yourself. You might notice other people complimenting you on how much weight you have loss.
Change is more sustainable when it is broken down into smaller achievable increments. The more successful you are at achieving a goal, the more likely you are to continue to strive toward the goal.
Once you have set your goal, it is time to start breaking it down into small achievable increments. In a weight loss scenario this might be deciding to change your diet or deciding to increase the amount of time you are exercising. I usually suggest breaking your goal down into two smaller objectives and then breaking those objectives into two smaller tasks.
For example:
GOAL: Lose 10 pounds.
Objective 1: Increase Exercise.
Task 1: Increase daily steps on fitness tracker.
Task 2: Start Couch to 5K run program.
Objective 2: Change Diet
Task 1: Drink 64 oz of water per day.
Task 2: Start tracking calories.
Breaking your larger goal into smaller objectives and tasks help you work incrementally towards implementing your goals. Instead of attempting to implement all of these changes at one time. It would be more effective to start by increasing water intake one week and then increasing steps on fitness tracker the next week. Once you have been successful with those two tasks, you can add in tracking your calories. After you have successfully implemented those tasks for a few weeks, it might be a good time to start your couch to 5k program.
Phasing in changes gives you time to master one step before you add more difficulty, it also gives you the opportunity to reassess your goals and determine whether or not the task, objective, and goal are realistic. For example, you may determine after attempting to get 10,000 steps on your fitness tracker that you are only able to get 5,000 steps per day. It might be better to scale your goal down to 7,500 steps and attempt to reach that goal instead of beating yourself up for not reaching 10,000 steps.
Never be afraid to adjust your goals in light of real data that says that your goals maybe unrealistic. The more realistic your goal, the more likely you are to successfully achieve it.
Leave a Reply