GOAL SETTING

GOAL SETTING

Now that you know all about the “BIG ENOUGH WHY"?  It is time to look at how to go about setting GOALS.

First of all remember, that I said your Dream Goal had to be realistic. Well there are some rules that you need to stick by to set effective GOALS.

The best GOAL setting is done using the Acronym SMART.

For today’s example I will use a hypothetical GOAL for someone who is carrying too much body fat and wants to reduce it.

S = Simple & Specific. Try not to make your GOALS too complicated, the more complicated your GOALS are the more difficult they are going to be to achieve. Make them a simple statement but specific to your needs.  “I want to lower my body fat.”  Is a simple and specific statement.

M = Measurable. This means that you need to be able to see the results that you are getting and need to know when you have achieved your GOAL. So with our above GOAL of lowering body fat, we now need to change it slightly, so the statement now becomes:

“I want to drop my Body fat to 10%”

From the above statement you can see now that you have a clear measurable GOAL.

A = Attainable. This means the GOAL should be attainable and challenging. Looking at the Hypothetical GOAL. Is 10% body fat achievable but also challenging? Yes by following the correct nutrition plan and taking the right steps, it certainly is.

R = Realistic. Meaning, whatever your GOAL is, it needs to be realistic. So if you had the GOAL to drop your body fat to 0% then this would not be realistic, so keep it real

T = Time measured. To set effective GOALS, they need to have a time imposed on their completion. Otherwise you could just leave them open ended and never have to meet a target. So now we need to change the GOAL again slightly to allow it to be time measured.  The Goal will now read. “I want to drop my Body fat to 10% by Nov 2012”. This gives a clear indication of when you want to achieve the 10% Body fat target by.

Once you have decided what your GOAL is and you have decided it is SMART. The next thing you must do is have an ACTION PLAN.

The way to put your ACTION PLAN together is to have small stepping stones to your ultimate success.

So from Your GOAL of reaching 10% Body Fat by Nov 2011, you have to split it down into smaller manageable steps.

The way to do this is to work backward from your end goal.

Let’s say that at the moment you are 20% body fat. That would mean that you have to drop 10% body fat in 17 months.

This means you would have to drop around 0.5% body fat per month to reach your target in 17 months time. If you look at the whole figure of 10% it looks quite a lot. So you would need to split your targets down to make them more manageable and measurable to make sure what you are doing is effective.

You could pick a medium term goal of hitting a drop of 6% body fat by April 2012 (10 months) and a short term goal of being at 17% body fat by DEC 2011 (6 months)

Once you have put some short and medium term goals in place, you then need to put in place how you are actually going to get to these targets. This will be your ACTION PLAN that you are going to follow.

So you can make a chart like this:

TARGET GOAL IS 10% BODYFAT NOV 2012

Steps to achieving this.

Interim target is 12% body fat by July 2012

1.        Maintain exercise regimen 4 times per week
2.        Increase my meals to 6 times per day, no more than 3 hours between eating, by doing this it will raise my    Metabolism.

Medium term goal is 15% Body fat by April 2012.

1.        Increase my training to 4-5 times per week from April 2012
2.       Keep measuring my body fat on a weekly basis
3.       Reward myself with a holiday on achieving 15% body fat

Short Term Goal is 17% body fat by DEC 2011.

1.         Educate myself on how to eat healthily.       Start to train 3 x per week for 40 minutes from June 22^nd 2011
2.         Measure my body fat on a weekly Basis
3.         Get support from my friends and family
4.        Cut down my drinking and socialising to Friday nights only

BIG ENOUGH WHY? Because I want to live long enough to interact with my Grand children when I am retired

The next thing involved with your goal setting is that you need to try to pre-empt obstacles to your success and some strategy’s to get round them.

For instance, if you procrastinate – you can make a time management chart and set deadlines.

If you like to socialise and go out for meals with friends. Make a concerted effort to reduce the number of times that you go out.

If you don’t like to train, start gradually and build up. Find a strategy to take your mind off the training while you are doing it.

The more you know about the Obstacles that may stand in your way to achieving your GOALS, the easier you can work out a plan, to get around them.

Although your GOALS are written down, they are not set in stone. There may be reasons that you are unable to achieve a certain target in your big plan.  No problem, all you need to do is identify why you missed the target, and then plan around it and set a new deadline.

When you have written down your GOALS and your ACTION PLAN, print them out and stick them with your BIG ENOUGH WHY? Where you can see them on a regular basis, always reinforcing them to you.

Finally, and this is very important. Always plan for success, but also plan for succession. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ONCE YOU HAVE ACHIEVED YOUR GOAL? So many people set GOALS and once they have achieved them, fall back into old ways, because they no longer have a focus. So if you are going to set some GOALS, please bear this fact in mind.

That’s it for GOAL SETTING, I hope that it may be of use to you someday.  It definitely works, when you do it properly and spend a bit of time planning.

So until the next blog, remember this

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.

Have a great day,

Steve.