Do you have goals? Are they written down? What do you do when you meet your goals? Do you celebrate?
Setting small achievable goals and then celebrating small victories along the way is the key to success. Often it’s not the BIG victory that’s as sweet as the small ones along the way. I’m referring to goals related to your fitness and fat loss, but of course they also apply to other areas of your life like career, family, finances, what ever.
When goal setting, think about the big picture, your larger vision and then break things down into small manageable steps.
If you need to lose 50 lbs, it’s an overwhelming thought. It’s much more manageable to consider losing two pounds a week and then celebrating every five or six pound loss.
Everyone is different in her fitness and fat loss journey. If you haven’t ‘arrived’ at healthy eating, but you cut back from a super sized meal at McD’s to eating the regular hamburger, that’s a huge victory.
Yes, it’d be better to be having a homemade salad and grilled fish, but taking the small step towards change is what’s important.
Don’t set yourself up for failure. The changes that are easiest to implement are those that you painlessly integrate into your lifestyle slowly over time.
If you usually drive to the corner store and you walk instead, you’re winning.
If you usually have a bottle of wine and you cut it down to a single glass, victory.
Take small steps towards your ultimate goal and eventually if you keep moving forward, you’ll get to your desired destination.
Here’s my example of small steps to a bigger goal: my transition to full time fitness entrepreneur was a little this way. I always did some training on the side while I was a schoolteacher. Then I opened a home studio while I was teaching, then I opened a fitness boot camp (while teaching and having my home studio). Eventually I gave up teaching and my studio to focus on my fitness boot camps and added online coaching.
Slowly over time, I’ve moved from A to B.
My goal was to be a full time fitness entrepreneur and now I’m doing it. I get to help people in my fitness boot camps and from the comfort of home while on my laptop. It’s been a slow and steady progression over about 8 years to ‘arrive’ where I am today. This is not the destination though, I’ll continue to set goals for myself and slowly reach those small ones until I get to a milestone goal.
My friend Alwyn Cosgrove talks about ‘process goals’. By using process goals, you create momentum that helps carry you to your bigger goals.
If 50 lbs of weight loss is your goal, you can set process goals to help you reach this. Process goals may include something like:
- Exercise every day by going to a fitness boot camp
- Limiting alcohol consumption to meal per week
- Allow two ‘cheat’ meals per week
- Increase water intake to 64 oz (8 x 8oz glasses)
Take the focus off the weight scale and open yourself up to enjoying the health benefits from the process goals. You’ll be pleasantly surprised that as you stick to your process goals week after week, the larger goal of 50 lb weight loss will happen.
Hitting your process goals = success.
Try this approach, and watch your goals become a reality.
Seriously, try using the process goals approach rather than the “end goal” in mind, and it might just be the perfect avenue for you.
Celebrate the victories (big or small),
