Author: Courtney Nuthals (D1 Greenbay)
From: Fortune Follows She Who Dares
The car is packed, your bags are stowed and you’re headed off on the road trip of a lifetime! You’re living in San Diego, CA and you’re so stoked to drive thousands of miles away to see New York City; your first stop is Zion National Park. A little while later you go to grab your map because you’ve come to an intersection you don’t recall. A panic comes to your body – you’ve forgotten the map. You say heck with it, turn right and clearly never make it to your destination.
Too many of us treat goal setting the same way. We dream about where we want to go, but we don’t have a map to get there. The difference between a dream and a goal? The written word.
IT’S TIME TO BECOME AN EXPERT AT BUILDING THE ROAD MAP TO YOUR GOALS.
Through the last week, while everyone was conquering testing I talked to everyone about GOALS. Enforcing to set a specific goal, the number one complaint I received was, “I don’t know how to set a goal.” So here I am to help.
First off, goal setting requires you to establish a specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted SMART goal. So many of us make goals that are unattainable. What we all need to do is learn how to set goals properly. Taking baby steps is the best way to achieve your goals.
BREAK IT DOWN
Break your big goal down into multiple smaller goals.
For example: if your goal is to run an 8 minute mile and you have a hard time running 1 mile straight to start off, set a goal that you can achieve in a shorter amount of time that will help you get there, such as “I will run one mile straight with no walking by September 1, 2013.”
After achieving that goal, you can now say, “I am going to run one mile in under 9 minutes by October 1, 2013”..and the goals keep getting reset once achieved.
WRITE YOUR GOAL IN PRESENT TENSE AND POSITIVE TENSE
Write your goals in the present and positive tense, as though they already happened. This gets your mind used to thinking that your dreams don’t have to be dreams; they can be reality.
Examples:
I can run one mile straight with no walking by September 1, 2013. I can do 5 strict pull-ups by October 1, 2013. I can do a handstand without the wall and can hold it for 2 minutes by August 2013.
MAKE IT MEASURABLE
Can you measure your goal? If you can’t measure it, it’s not a goal. This can be a challenging part of goal-setting, but there is a way to write each of your biggest, baddest goals so that they are measurable in some way.
So you’ve written down your goals. NOW WHAT?
TELL SOMEONE.
Telling someone keeps you accountable. As long as you share goals with positive, uplifting cheerleaders, they’ll be sure to help keep you accountable.
GET AFTER IT!
Don’t just write it down on a piece of paper and think it will happen! GET TO IT! You need to be ready to work your butt off.
Reviewing your goals daily is a crucial part of your success and must become part of your routine. Each morning when you wake up, read your goal out loud, visualize the completed goal. Then each night, right before you go to bed, repeat the process.
I remember about a little more than one year ago, my goal was to get “kipping pull-ups” down. I had SUCH a struggle with doing pull-ups. Give me anything lower body and I’d crush you. Give me anything upper body and I would get trampled on. I wanted to get stronger SO BADLY but I was doing all of the wrong things. I had this goal in my head and wasn’t doing anything specific to work on my pull-ups. Finally, I let my coach know my goal. He programmed 5 weeks of extra work on top of my normal training. It was hard some days. Some days I just didn’t feel like spending an extra 30 minutes at the gym post workout, but I kept telling myself, “is me going home right now going to help me achieve my goal or stray further away from it?” That question was answered immediately. Guess what? 5 weeks later I did my first workout with ALL kipping pull-ups. 50 kipping pull-ups total within 20 minutes (which was a huge deal for me)! After achieving my goal, I didn’t just say, “okay, I achieved my goal. Now I don’t have to work on pull-ups anymore!”…that just gave me that much more motivation to not let myself use a pull-up band ever again.
Every time you make a decision during the day, ask yourself, “Does it take me closer to, or further from my goal?” You’ll know what to do.