Goals

How many of us set goals? How many of us monitor those goals? Ladies, I hope this post finds you happy healthy and well. This blog helps us understand goals and why they are important. Imagine you are going on a road trip. You have your destination, you know about how long you wish to be away, and you pack your bags, get in your car and head out. But how do you know you’re heading in the right direction? And what IS your destination?

So often, we are used to calling up navigation applications and telling the app where we wish to go, where we are starting from and “POOF,” we have a route set out for us and a voice guiding us when we have the sound activated. We know when to turn, what direction to turn, and how far away or how close we are to reaching our destination. How often do we reach our fitness destinations though? For many of us, not often enough or not at all.

Goal setting is a skill that I believe we should develop early in life and one that we should teach our children as well. Oftentimes, we are teaching them how to reach goals, but not how to set goals, how to plan and prepare, or when to make the goals more challenging. Life is a series of goal-setting attempts and sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and sometimes we have no idea how or why we ended up where we are.

Psychologically, it is important to make tasks fun, make them meaningful, and make them realistic. One practice that is widely used is the S.M.A.R.T. Goal system and it is effective and easy to learn. S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive. These are important steps when we sit down to write out our goals and it acts as a roadmap for us. It also helps to determine if our goals are realistic.

“I want to be healthy,” or “I want to be thinner,” or “I want to lose weight,” are great goals, but too generalized and cannot be viewed as measurable or realistic. Being healthy isn’t just one aspect of our physical self. Being healthy involves many choices such as healthy eating and a regimen of physical fitness. This is also combined with a reasonable sleep schedule, stress management program and just being aware of our habits; Good AND Bad.

Success is found through many habits. We determine what we wish to accomplish, then we start to design a plan for getting to our goal. We create the roadmap and begin taking steps to reach our destination. Ladies, we are capable of achieving anything if we pursue the goals using the correct processes. We CAN do this!!!!