Unleash Your Health & Fitness Goals

Editor’s Note. This is a guest post by Alex @ Your Goal Book

Goal setting is used by everyone from the work-at-home mom looking to shed ten pounds to the Olympic-caliber athlete. These principles are simple, timeless, and more importantly, extremely effective when used correctly.

Unleash goal setting on your health and fitness objectives, and it will provide you with–

1. Clarity. Efficient goal setting entails have an outcome that is clearly defined. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve you are able to zero in on this target. This means avoiding goals like, “I want to be skinny” or “I want to lift lots of weight.” These goals are hazy and vague, and impossible to achieve because they are completely subjective. Nail your goal down with a specific figure and date. “I want to have 12% body fat by November 30.” “I want to bench-press 185 pounds ten times by March 1.”
2. A Plan of Action. Having that goal is a critical first step, and the next is to break it down into manageable, bite-sized pieces that you can begin with immediately. Your plan of action is vital in times when we feel our motivation lagging. By reviewing and updating it along our journey we can find that little jolt of desire to keep us on track. A solid action plan includes steps that you can take within the next 24 hours. Doing so will set momentum into motion and get you in the habit of taking action.
3. Focus. Extraneous activities begin to fall to the wayside. Tasks you considered important days ago suddenly show their true irrelevance to your happiness. By having this compass, we develop a laser-like focus towards our ultimate objective. We suddenly find that we are able to free up the time necessary to do what we need to do. Where before you may have had time to browse pictures on Facebook for hours on end, suddenly with that goal in mind you have less time for the computer and more time for the gym.
4. Purpose. A major component of goal setting is coming to terms with why you want to achieve something. Many people set goals for superficial or shallow reasons; they want to accomplish something to please someone else, or maybe they even don’t really want to achieve the goal, but think they should try anyway.

   For those that set goals that are truly inspiring and moving, they are imbedded with a powerful and long-lasting sense of purpose and drive. Find the purpose in your health and fitness goals by making it bigger than yourself. For example, if you wanted to lose some weight, make a blog outlining your progress so that you could help and inspire others looking to do the same weight.

5. Determination. When we have that clearly defined goal, whether it is to lose weight, look good, or even gain weight, problems become opportunities for improvement. We begin to view setbacks and roadblocks as challenges.

3 Extra Tips to Help Get You Started:

1. Commit a small amount of time per day to your goal. It doesn’t have to be hours. Book 15, 30 even 45 minutes and shut everything else out during that time. Start small and pick up the action habit so that down the road when you want to invest greater chunks of time into your goal you will continue to do it consistently.
2. Visualize your goal every night before you go to bed. Imagine how good it is going to feel when you accomplish it. Picture it in your mind with as much detail as you can; what you are going to look like when you achieve your goal, who is going to be there at your side, how you will feel, and so on.
3. Be willing to be flexible! Don’t give yourself an impossible goal that will stop you before you even begin. Start with a small goal, build your confidence in your goal-setting abilities, and continually make your goals more challenging.

“Guest contributor Alex Work is a personal development consultant who writes often on goal setting, and has also authored a custom goal book that you can find at YourGoalBook.com”