Smashby's Training Blog

Goal Setting

I’ve featured several posts on New Years Resolutions, Goal Setting, and how to increase our chances of actually reaching our destinations. This morning I received an email from the folks at Doostang.com (a finance and consulting recruiting website) about Goal Setting, and I wanted to share it with you all.

It’s a lot of the same messages, but sometimes hearing things again make the information easier to retain!

“Doostang News
January 3: Tips for Sticking to Your New Year’s Resolutions

You can also read this in full on The Doostang Blog.

It’s one thing to contemplate what resolutions you’d like to pursue for the New Year. It’s another to put together a plan of action for achieving what you set out to do. We’re all notorious for promising to ourselves that we’ll do something and then letting our goals fall by the wayside. Oftentimes, this isn’t because of a lack of drive or tenacity, but rather, the lack of a viable plan of action. So consider these tips when putting together your game plan for 2011:

Be Specific
When setting goals, make sure to frame them specifically. What exactly do you want to achieve and how are you going to measure it? If you can’t say exactly what success looks like, you’re less likely to attain it and more likely to make excuses for yourself.

Put It in Writing
Make your goals official by putting them in writing. Once you do this, you’ve created a tangible document that you have to hold yourself to. Doing this will make reaching your goals seem like a more formal exercise, and will give you something to turn back to for a reminder of what you are trying to accomplish.

Document Your Journey
Similarly, it’s helpful to record your progress as you strive to reach your goals. Doing so keeps you on task and lets you know if you need to work harder. If you’re feeling disheartened, you can browse through the progress you’ve made to remind yourself that success is possible.

Identify Smaller Goals
Far easier than tackling one giant goal is taking on multiple smaller ones that lead up to that ultimate objective – think of this as taking baby steps. Figure out what your first step needs to be, and then plan out all the successive steps you will need to take in order to complete your larger plan.

Find an Accountability Partner
Resolutions are easier to tackle when someone else is doing so alongside you. Keep each other on task and talk through obstacles you encounter. If you also focus on being there for your friend, you are less likely to let yourself down.

Change Your Plan of Attack
If something isn’t working, take a step back and reevaluate what you are doing. Don’t be afraid to change your approach or to readjust your mini-goals.

Reward Yourself
The reward shouldn’t just come when you’ve reached your final goal. Make sure to celebrate your progress along the way. You’ll feel more enthusiastic about the journey, and reaching small milestones is something you should be proud of anyway.

Identifying resolutions is admirable in its own right, and is a first step in and of itself. Follow the helpful tips above, and you should be better equipped to sustain your momentum!

Happy New Year,
The Doostang Team”

GOOD LUCK!

As the year 2010 comes to a close, that means one thing:
Many people are already thinking of their “New Year’s Resolutions” that they’ll usually say out loud at night on December 31st. Most of the time, our motivation and desire to reach these goals will be honest and heartfelt. Many people will start out the new year right on schedule, too. Yet after a few days… weeks… months… these resolutions become just words we spoke in the past.

We realize that these goals we set:

• are too time-consuming
• require too much time and effort
• won’t always be fun
• are simply too challenging
• may not come true the way we had planned

Some of us won’t even make “resolutions” because we’ve experience the above pattern too many times before. So why would this year be any different, right? So are we not reaching these goals because we’re not willing to put in the work to reach them? Or are we afraid of not reaching them?

Are you afraid of failure? Not are you worried about failing… do you literally fear failure? We’ve addressed this theme a few times, and I wanted to discuss it again.

If you watched the video on my Brain Power post from 12/12/10, and if you read the comments from Derek Sivers, himself (along with some great feedback from a friend of mine, Yen), you can see that “talking” about goals is simply not enough. The whole point of sharing goals or resolutions should be to motivate us, but often the satisfaction we get from people “congratulating” us from just SETTING the goals, de-motivates us from actually working towards the goals themselves. Sounds crazy, but it’s true. We already feel some pay-off for saying that we want to do something, and seeing how proud it makes other people.

I want to share a few things that I hope will serve as inspiration to us all as we make these new promises to ourselves.

– The quote below comes from Kelly Brown, of CrossFit Agoge. The day I read it, I retyped it and posted it on the wall of my office at work, and on my white board at home:
“We will succeed because we are not so paralyzed by fear of failure that we fail to try.”

– This video is a scene from the movie Coach Carter, stating the same message:

That’s just the touchy-feely stuff, right? Now how about the truth. Many of us have “Hopes and Dreams”. Instead of calling them by that name, let’s call them “attainable goals”. They already sound more realistic, right? It’s critical that we realize that these goals will require work, and we need to be excited to put in that time!

This last video is a segment from Kevin Spacey talking about that work.

The best part of my job, as a trainer, is seeing and hearing about how my athletes and friends reach (and often times surpass) the “attainable goals” that they set for themselves. But it took planning and hard work to get there.

Holiday Project:
IF you are someone who likes sharing your goals, share one of them with me. You can do it in the comments section of this post or you can email it to me at tomashbytraining@gmail.com.

What I will then do is will reply to you and together we will devise a PLAN for reaching that goal. You can say “I want to lose 10 pounds” a million times, but without a plan to get there, and without putting in the time, they’re just words. I will help you with the plan, and you need to put in the work. I don’t care if your goal is fitness related or not.

There’s no reason to wait until January 1st, 2011 to do make these commitments to ourselves. We can get one step closer today. We can start right now. Ready, go.