Setting yourself up for success is as easy or as hard as you decide to make it.One of the main problems people come across when planning for success is that they over simplify their goals. They think that simply by stating their intention they will somehow come up with a means of reaching that goal. For example, if my goal where to lose weight, just implying that I want to lose weight is not going to give me a solid plan in achieving it. However, if I rethink my goal and say to myself, okay maybe I want to lose 5kg in 3 weeks as part of my overall goal of losing 20kg, I have already set a minor goal that is going to help me in progressing to my main goal.
The reason this works better than setting up your larger goals is because you are limiting yourself to a set time period in which you have to achieve those goals, this puts more pressure on you to work at achieving your goals. So what’s going on behind the scenes? It’s a well studied fact that humans are much more influenced by instant gratification than future gains, that’s the reason why we’ll often end up splurging some of that hard saved cash on something that is going to make us feel good now, opposed to something of future benefit. So if all your brain wants is instant gratification, even though it knows that the future benefits may outweigh the instant pleasure, how do you use that to your advantage?
This is where we start to break down our goals even more. So we look at the same example as before and say to our self well I’m starting with 5kg in 3 weeks, what am I going to do? Well I could start by calculating my daily macronutrient intake (that’s proteins carbohydrates and fats) for losing a certain amount of weight per day, so if my goal is 5kg and I have 21 days to do it, I’m going to need to lose just over 230g per day (that sounds reasonable right!), so I Google macronutrient calculators and workout exactly how many of each of those three categories I need to eat to lose that amount each day. Let’s just say I want to be extra certain I’m going to keep it off and decide to start working out three times a week for 30 minutes doing high intensity interval training because I know that it’s an efficient way to burn fat, all of a sudden that fat is disappearing because I’m burning more than I’m consuming and my diet is solid. Soon my goal of losing 5kgs in 3weeks is starting to look too easy.
This is just an example of how good planning can help you gain the upper hand in creating your success. This isn’t limited to weight loss alone; you can apply the same principle to any goal you have in 4 steps.
1. Define the overall goal.
2. Break it down to a shortened period (no longer than a month)
3. Break it down even more (daily, weekly, whatever it takes)
4. Re-access as you progress (important if you want to keep progressing)
Remember to keep your goals timely, if you start setting goals that take too long( in excess of a month) it can be hard to stick too them because your brain just wants that instant gratification.
Most of all its important to remember that you control the outcome, if things aren’t going your way, switch it up. You control your success. Be your own person and claim it through simple planning today.
JD
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