Goal Setting? What are you planning this long weekend? Long weekend plans seldom involve ideas about diet and exercise but I am going to give you a quick set of questions that you can think about this weekend that I hope will put you into a position for dramatically improving your health between now and the end of the year.
Before we start goal setting again lets First look at what season and events are happening between now and the end of the year. Most people take a week or two of vacation in the summer and after the hot days and nights of July and August we will have the labor day long weekend and the fall which will quickly turn into Winter. We are now half way through the year with a half of the year left to go and our goals for the year that we set in December or January should be half completed by now.
OK here are a few questions that you should ask yourself:
What have I become so far this year?
At the beginning of the year many of us, I know me anyway, think that we will achieve our yearly goals and no matter what gets in the way our focus and determination will carry us through. Well as we all find out by February that focus can get a little scattered at times and there are always setback that we need to recover from. I know I expected my to stay at least the same or even drop a few pounds and here I am up 10 pounds from Christmas. Not so good. Also I have noticed that my overall fitness level is at least as good as at Christmas. But, my planned training has not yet happened and the equipment is gathering dust in the basement. What about you? How has your eating been? How about exercise and overall fitness motivation?
What are my plans for the rest of the year?
If you are on track are you going to make your goals? Are you going to have to readjust your goals for the year? How about the focus from January? Are you still interested in what you set out to do? I know that some of my ideas of doing different sports has not happened but I feel that Summer is just starting for me so I hope to still do a lot of outside activities. Getting good control of my pop and junk food has not happened but is still important to me and I now want to drop these pounds that have creeping onto my frame. How about you? Write down the changes that you want to make.
What kind of obstacles are you going to run into?
With the first question you probably found a lot of holes in your plans for the year. If you are really honest with yourself you probably found some of your hot button issues. Some things I have found really drive me crazy in retrospect are watching the people around me and emulating either their bad habits or lack of will power. I know that I have to hold myself to my own higher standard so that is one of the things that I have found I will have to improve. Also I believe that I have a tendency to sometimes take the easy way out and rest on my laurels whenever I have succeeded. I need to have a weekly plan and to follow that plan until the next time the plan comes up. Are you finding that you have motivation issues? What are you going to do to fix these.
Not bad I must say. Three questions that you get to dwell with over the next few days. The best way probably to deal with this is to write down the three questions and then write an answer no matte how superficial and then keep that piece of paper around for the next few days adding things as you think about them. I have never found that one quick time of reflection is enough to really crystallize what you have or need. After a couple days fo dwelling on these three questions you will be in a great place to site down and rearticulate your fitness goals for the rest of the year.
When redoing your goals you can at the same time celebrate what you have done so far this year. Make sure that you have some good comments from the first question to tip off some celebrating otherwise it will be really hard to motivate yourself to make more changes and to stay or get back on track. I find the celebration and sense of accomplishment are the only things that can really get me going again to make changes otherwise it is too easy to just look at fitness improvement as another job or todo list and then you will never get the changes that you would love to see.