Your Goals Aren’t Helping You Succeed
Achieving your fitness and health goals is lot like climbing stairs. You take a step at a time until you reach the top. A lot of people get put off very early on whilst climbing the stairs. It is a long way up and they can see the hard work ahead.
They will be put off by not knowing where to start, the lack of quick results that are often promised. Or even being unsure of the right thing to do, and jumping from fad to bandwagon. They focus on the end goal, the thing they really want, the OUTCOME.
For example, you may want to lose some weight. The first thing you will do is come up with a generic idea of what want to weigh. In your mind you picture how you look at this weight. Now this is the goal and all efforts are focused on achieving this weight. You start a diet, you get on the scale each week and judge yourself, and your success based upon that scale reading.
Let’s zoom out of this situation and consider an alternative strategy, one which produces success everyday and allows you to build momentum. It is much more productive to concentrate on the PROCESS rather than OUTCOME.
Firstly let’s think carefully about what ACTIONS we need to take in order to achieve the goal. In this instance, the first action I may want my weight loss client to achieve, would be to increase protein intake with each meal. Now they’ll concentrate efforts upon achieving the PROCESS goal. By doing this they will be moving towards success of the ultimate goal of losing weight. They are in CONTROL of the process goal everyday, and can have varying amount of success day to day. But there is no failure, and you can get back to success quickly without hitting self destruct. Slowly moving towards permanent habits for achieving their overall goal of weight loss. You may want introduce a new PROCESS goal each week if you were successful, or even one every other week. Weight loss and healthier lifestyle need not be a rush or a complete overhaul.
Shift your focus to LONG TERM and SUSTAINABILITY when trying improve your health. A great start could be to take a look at our guide on healthy eating, it has some great recipes ideas and information to help you look and feel better.
The idea behind process goals is to shift to create better habits, as well as moving away from a fixation on the end outcome.
TLDR
Work out the things you need to do in order to achieve your overall aim, and focus on that. Start with a few processes each month, make sure they are achievable, and climb the stairs one step at a time.
