Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The Power of Setting Goals

Setting goals gives you the ability to see the light at the end of the tunnel and provides you with short term motivation to get to that light.

 

All the way from Professional level athletes to successful business men to entrepreneurs get to that point by setting goals. When you have a clear vision in site it's easy to see what you need to do to get to that clear destination. Coming across distractions and obstacles are also clearly seen and avoided because it's not in your best interest to go that route in order to get to your destination.

 

How to Set Goals and Accomplish Them

  • Get a pen and paper and write down exactly what you want in precise detail (most people can't even get past this stage)
  • Brainstorm about what you need to do to get there
    • Break the goal down by year, month, week, day, etc. so you can "eat the elephant one bite at a time"image
  • Bring in any outside help you might need to accomplish the goal (friends, family, mentors, etc.)
  • Take Action and start chipping away at your goal one day at a time

 

Going through the entire process and working through a goal can be extremely rewarding and will boost your confidence to the point where you can conquer the world! Anything you want to do, can be achieved. You need a plan, tactics, and the ability to waste no time in taking action

 

  • The Goal

I setup a short term goal for myself this past weekend. Last summer I weighed 180 lbs at 9% body fat which at the time I wasn't impressed with. I was going to the gym on a daily basis and still didn't like what I saw. Looking back now I was easily in the best shape of my life. Now, I'm 205 at 22% body fat and I attribute a lot of that to me focusing 150% of my attention to learning to trade stocks. Plus, there were other factors as well. I have two herniated discs back from the summer of '05 due to a lifting injury, and I did a lot of moving from house to house which killed my motivation to keep going to the gym.

 

  • Goal Breakdown

By June 6th (a few days before my 21st B-Day) I want to be back down to 185 at 10% BF. So I got my spreadsheet open and broke it down by weekly milestones. I'll be weighing myself every Friday morning. I need to lose 1.3 lbs a week which isn't too aggressive but will definitely require work. I'm also keeping track of how long it takes me to run to my destination which is quite rough. There's a lot of slow and steady inclines and declines on the way there. Then when I get there I run 2 sets of stairs which run down the side of a cliff (76 steps, I counted, lol). Round trip I believe is about 1.25 miles

 

  • Strategy to Accomplish

So, I knew my goal, I know what I needed to shoot for. How do I do it? I'm going to bump up my running from a once a week or so to 5 days a week. I'm also going to watch very careful what I eat. Which I thought would be hard because I can eat anything and everything, haha but just the simple fact that I have a hard copy goal that's clear and attainable in the back of my mind is really pushing me to stick to the plan.

 

I was actually amazed at how well I was doing by not eating any garbage food and walking right by it considering my sweet tooth is horrible! I hate it and had such a hard time getting rid of it. But now I think I can easily get over it thanks to my clear goals. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

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