Have made New Years resolutions or set goals and failed in the past? Feel lost and need tips to achieving goals?
If you’ve failed to reach your resolutions and feel frustrated or lost, don’t worry. You’re not alone. According to Forbes, many people drop their NYE resolutions as soon as February. What about you this year so far? Are you achieving your goals? If not, there may be several reasons why you aren’t. Whether your goals is to lose weight, quit smoking, work out, save money, get a promotion, get a raise, or something else, let us go over with you a couple different tips to achieving goals that will help you.
Write It Down
There are several tips to achieving goals, this first is writing down your goal. This month, we challenge you to pick one goal and write it down using pen and paper. Think about something you’d like to accomplish. The goal can be fitness related, or something different like a professional work goal, financial, etc. It’s totally up to you.
Now, instead of letting the idea flow in and out of your head, pick up a pen and write it down. I know it sounds a bit silly in today’s day and age where we can whip up things quickly on a computer, phone, or tablet; however, bear with me. As an educator, I can tell you from personal experience as well as professional experience that the good old fashioned way of writing is best.
When I went off to college (Go Loyola University of Chicago Ramblers!) I thought I’d type all my lecture notes on my laptop. It was more efficient and then I’d be able to print up the notes and study from them. Well… that didn’t work. I found on days I typed my notes, I had a harder time remembering the content compared to the days when I’d take notes by hand. Turns out that writing notes by hand helped me better commit the content to memory. I noticed the same thing happened with my students years later. Those who took notes with pencil and paper remember the material better. With that said, take the time to actually write out your goals by hand.
Writing down goals helps in 2 ways:
- Looking at a visual reminder of your goal every day keeps it top of mind.
- Writing helps commit it to memory. This relates to encoding, the process by which our brain decides what gets stored in our long-term memory and what gets discarded.
People who describe or write down their goals are 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to accomplish them.
SMART Goals
Onto the next tips for achieving goals; make sure you write a SMART goal. This is a topic I dove into a little bit a few weeks ago. It was important then, and it’s important now. As mentioned in my other blog post, often times people set too big of goals for themselves or they set a reasonable one, but still don’t reach their goal by the end of the year. Take the time to create SMART Goals. It makes a HUGE difference!
For those of you who are unfamiliar, SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. When writing goals, it is important to make sure your goal checks off all those. In addition to writing SMART goals, another important thing to do is to create benchmark goals. These are ones that break the bigger goal into smaller bits to make it more manageable. Here are a few examples:
- BIG GOAL:
- I will lose 50 pounds by 12/31/2021 by eating well and exercising consistently.
- BENCHMARKS:
- 1: I will lose 13 lbs by 3/31/2021
- 2: I will lose 12 lbs more (25 lbs total) by 6/30/2021
- 3: I will lose 13 lbs more (38 lbs total) by 9/30/2021
- 4: I will lose 12 lbs more (50 total) by 12/31/2021
Remember, a SMART goal has to be attainable. With that said, it is not reasonable to expect the average person to lose 20 pounds in a month. A reasonable number would be a lot closer to 10 pounds (about 1-2 pounds of weight loss per week). Slow and steady wins the race. This is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Also, if you hit a benchmark sooner than expected, keep going!
Develop A Plan
Time to dive into our third and final tip for achieving your goal. Okay, so you wrote down your goal, made sure it is SMART, and created benchmarks. Now what? Having a goal written down is one thing, executing actions to get towards it is a completely different thing. Think through the steps you’ll need to take to make it happen. Develop a plan of attack.
Let’s say you want to come to an early morning class at the gym 4 days a week for a month. What do you have to do to accomplish that? It might be setting out your gym clothes the night before, committing to an earlier bedtime, or asking a friend to hold you accountable.
Need Some Help?
We love to help you achieve your goals! Tell us what you’d like to accomplish, and we’ll develop the SMART goal, benchmarks, and plan to getting there.
Contact us today for a complimentary consultation.
Once your goal is set, then we can create a customized nutrition plan and a personalized exercise program using whatever tools and resources you have available and feel comfortable with.
This is going to be the year you hit your New Year’s Resolution. You’ve got this!!!