Weider Nutrition Group - Goal Setting

Goal Setting

No matter what area of your life you’d like to improve (health, fitness, personal, career), the first step to realizing your dream is to set a goal and create a plan to reach that goal. Unfortunately though, many people don’t realize the importance of taking the time to properly plan out their goals, often leading to disappointing results. To get the best results and set yourself up for success, follow these helpful tips and strategies:

Write your goals down. When it comes to goal setting, this is one of the most important things you can do, and one that gets overlooked too often. People sometimes feel that having a goal in their head is just as good as writing it down, or maybe they don’t feel comfortable writing their goals down – whatever the reason, it’s crucial that you do. Writing down exactly what you want to achieve is important for a few reasons:

- Writing down your goals on paper creates a real commitment towards achieving your goal (and if you aren’t truly committed to reaching your goal then you probably won’t).
- Writing down your goals will keep it fresh and clear in your mind.
- Writing down your goals helps you focus on reaching those goals.

Keep it positive. A big component to success is keeping a positive mind-set – the I-can-do-it attitude – and you can help keep this upbeat attitude by phrasing your goals and plans positively. Avoid words like Never, Don’t, Stop, Limit, Quit and Lose – these negative words can have a discouraging effect on your goal-reaching efforts by placing restrictions on yourself. No one likes being told that they can’t do something, and that includes you telling yourself - by using inflexible wording and negative tone, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Instead, try to rephrase your goal in a positive light. Rather than focusing on what you can’t do, try to focus on what you would like to accomplish by reaching your goal. For example, instead of making your goal ‘I would like to lose weight’, try writing it as ‘I am a size X’.

Another tip for getting the most out of your goals is to write them in present tense. Instead of writing ‘I will work out 3 times a week’, try writing ‘I work out 3 times a week’. When you write a goal in the form of ‘I will’ or ‘I want’, your subconscious, which tends to take things very literally, will view this as something that might happen at some point in the future, but since it’s not immediate, it files it away. By using present tense, you’re telling your subconscious that it’s something that needs attention now, not later.

Set multiple goals or milestones. Another misconception is that you only need to set one final goal for yourself. In reality, you’ll be giving yourself a better chance for success if you create many goals, both long-term and short-term goals, as well as milestones (discussed below). Generally, your short-term goals should be easier to reach, giving you frequent successes that will build your confidence and give you momentum to keep working towards your long-term goals. Short-term goals should directly impact your final goal and should be stated in quantitative terms. For example, if your goal is quit smoking (although to keep it positive, it could be phrased something like ‘in the year 2012, I’ll have been smoke-free for 5 years’), then your first short-term goal might be to be smoke-free for a week, and your second short-term goal to be smoke-free for a month. You can make as many short-term goals as you feel you need, but just be wary of making more than are necessary, simply for the ‘check-off’ factor (yes, it’s satisfying to check something off your list, but if you’re making so many simple goals that you’re checking them off left, right and center, it will ultimately take away the feeling of accomplishment and pride that comes with reaching one of your short-term goals. This could lead to a lack of motivation to keep working towards any goals - or you could get sidetracked and start concentrating so much on checking something off, that you start to make irrelevant goals.)

Milestones are checkpoints along the path to reaching your long-term goals. They do not necessarily have to be quantitative goals – they can be events, short-term goals or accomplishments and they are a valuable part of your goal-reaching plan. For example, if your goal is to quit smoking, then one of your milestones might be a measurable short-term goal, such as going a month smoke-free. It could also be an indirect accomplishment, such as running a 5k (which you might not have been able to do had you still been smoking). Or it could be an immeasurable event, such as throwing away all smoking paraphernalia (ashtrays, lighters, etc). Milestones are an important way to keep yourself motivated and focused on working towards your final goal. You don’t necessarily have to plan out all your milestones before you begin – as you go, revisit your short and long term goals and look for opportunities to reach new and motivating milestones.

Make your goals clear, precise and realistic. If your goal is vague or ambiguous, such as ‘lose weight’ or ‘eat healthier’, then how can you know when you’ve reached them? By setting a measurable goal, you’ll know exactly what your final objective is, what you need to do to reach it, and exactly when you’ve reached it. For example, instead of making your goal ‘lose weight’, make your goal more specific: ‘lose 15 pounds in 2 months by eating 1500 calories a day and exercising for at least 30 minutes, 3 times a week’. Within this goal are other smaller goals (daily caloric intake and exercise schedule), and even before creating an action plan and smaller short-term goals, you can already see exactly what you’ll need to do to reach your goal and now you’ll accurately know when you’ve reached it.

Make your goals flexible. Life isn’t set in stone, so why should your goals be? When you make your goals inflexible, you’re not allowing yourself any wiggle room for life’s unexpected events or situations. This leads to an all-or-nothing mentality (‘I have to reach my goal exactly as I’ve set it, or I’ve failed’), and if something unforeseen does happen, either delaying or changing your ability to reach your goal, it can cause de-motivation, stress and even giving up altogether. So instead of writing a goal and sticking rigidly to it, remember to review your goals regularly and tweak them as your situation requires.

Only plan for goals or milestones that will directly impact your final goal. When working towards a goal, it’s very easy to get side-tracked or bogged down with something that won’t help you reach your final goal. Before setting yourself a new short-term goal or milestone, ask yourself if achieving it will help you get closer to your final goal, further away, or won’t impact it at all. If your answer is one of the latter two, then it’s time to either refine it so that it will move you closer to your final goal, or take it out of your plan altogether so you don’t spend unnecessary time and effort working towards it. This will help you keep your eye on the objective and won’t lead to the loss of motivation that may come from working towards something, only to realize after that it didn’t further your progress.

Keep track of your progress. At some point during the path to success, you’re bound to get de-motivated, tired, stressed or even bored. This is when you need to remind yourself why you set the goal in the first place, why it was so important to you and how far you’ve already come. Memory can be a funny thing, and it’s very easy to forget all the progress you’ve made – the best way to keep track is to write down your progress. Whenever you lose sight of your goal or begin to doubt yourself, look back at where you were on the first day and see how far you’ve come. Make sure to write your doubts and worries down too – at some point it might help you to look back and see that you’ve made it through a rough patch before.

Some people like to create charts and checklists, while others prefer to keep a journal of their progress, obstacles and successes – whichever way works best for you is the way to go, but it is important that you have some method of keeping track of your improvement.

Review and adjust your goals and plan regularly. Many people come up with and/or write down their goals and just leave them at that. This is like writing down a list of groceries to buy and then purposely leaving the list at home. You wrote your goals down for a reason – to keep yourself focused and on-track and to keep your goals clear in your mind. By regularly reviewing and adjusting your goals and your action plan to meet your current progress and situation, you’ll be greatly improving your likelihood of success.