I’ve been goalsetting for 2019 both in business, wellness and dog performance sports. It has really made me realize I don’t speak about this often enough to my clients and I think it is an important discussion.
It is a fact, if we aim at nothing we’re going to hit nothing everytime. I mean who needs to practice aiming at nothing. We can do that in our sleep.
I don’t like resolutions, I don’t find them motivating, so instead I plan steps like on a ladder. For instance, “this month I am climbing the first rung to…. ” . I don’t say I am going to try to get to that first rung, I say I am climbing, I am doing. Our brains are like computers and whatever we tell our brain it strives to make true. So I say I am getting my next MACH, I am losing 20 lbs., I am training reliable contacts. Let your brain chew on that stuff instead of “trying” to do something. This is nothing new, goal setting and positive thinking, but putting it into practice is hard. Staying motivated and working toward your goals everyday, that is hard. Consistency is hard. But when we set goals we are working on reaching higher, practicing stretching ourselves and we are getting better all the time.
So I encourage you to set some goals, write them down, evaluate them, daily, weekly, monthly as you progress through the year.
Goals help us to motivate ourselves and motivation takes practice everyday to push toward that goal. And yes we will get discouraged from time to time but we just keep pushing forward toward our best selves, toward our goals and ultimately our dreams. Who we surround ourselves with makes a huge difference too. We need people in our corner, friends and trainers who cheer us on, celebrate with us but are also realistic with us. Yes, encouragers but also people who help us be accountable to our goals so we don’t let ourselves off the hook.
Let your trainer know what you are working toward, tell a good friend who is as interested in your success as they are in their own. You can be accountability partners for each other.
So maybe we don’t reach our goals in the time we wanted, so what? We will learn, we will grow as a people. as trainers and as a competitors. We will increase our skills, reevaluate, regroup and go for it again. In the end we can say, we set goals, we worked toward it and we benefited from the work. If we are dedicated and stay the course we will go much further than if we had not set those goals in the first place. And we have a much better chance of reaching our goals than if we had not set them at all.