Hitting our stride at the mid-month marker, hopefully you’ve taken a moment to get your priorities straight. It may have taken a minute to dust off the ole running shoes, do a pantry clean out or refresh your resume — and if you haven’t taken the action yet, let’s revisit last week’s post Places We'll Go.
As we touched on, in order to achieve our goals - we need to get clear about why we want to accomplish them. Look deeper than the surface level accomplishment, what will doing x, y, z say about you? What would it mean to you? Who will we be when we’ve accomplished that goal? How does the goal contribute to our growth as an individual? And how does that person align with the vision of yourself you see for the future?
Solidifying the why is the first step in accessing your greatest potential. Once you have clarity on your vision of the future - you are much more likely to pursue the action items to get there.
Step one: Identify (1-3) long term goal(s) - Write them down!
Step two: Clarify why these are important to you.
Step three: Identify (1-3) short term goal(s) - Give them due dates!
How?
Let’s break down some long term goals into smaller, more manageable steps that can be accomplished in shorter time frames. When we check items off our list, we get a positive reinforcement - so while you may not be able to say you ran 3 miles your first week of triathlon training, you can check off “6 minutes of walking” and smile because – you did that! Using smaller goals to climb the big goals is a healthy hack to gaining momentum towards your ultimate objectives.
In order to set effective short term goals we want to:
Identify the goal
Be realistic (Set SMART Goals)
Write them down
Celebrate each accomplishment!
Our use of short term goals will create a roadmap toward achieving your long term goals, and make the process seem less daunting and more attainable. It will be important to track the progress of each short-term goal - know when it’s complete and how you will be leveling up or expanding upon the goal. As you progress, your priorities may shift. Perhaps running 2x/week has become a habit, and you’d like to focus your attention elsewhere. Pursue these long term goals, and celebrate the time when you can check them off and move on to the next! Long term success doesn’t seem quite as far off when we’ve got the pathway carved out for us.
Here are a few examples of SMART short term goals to long term objectives we discussed last week. Next week we will go into more detail about what a “SMART” goal is but if you’re ready to get started feel free to comment, email me upsidedownphysio@gmail.com or connect with my instagram!
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