By Vaughn Gray

Getting Motivated- Setting and Achieving Goals

Regardless of the changes you want to make in your body, or what you want to achieve in your life, setting goals is a critical step in translating your desires into reality. In the other getting motivated sections, we encourage you to think big, picturing the way your life will be once you have achieved all of your goals. In this early phase, the Dare to Dream phase, it’s all about defining your vision of the life you want to live and getting motivated to make the changes that will lead you to that life. While you’re doing this, you shouldn’t think at all about the practical, immediate steps to achieving your vision.

Once your vision is firmly fleshed out, the time comes for setting goals. These goals will define the road to the life you want to lead. For the most part, a goal should be a definite, unequivocal endpoint for you to work towards. Dropping a dress/pants size, or getting an A on a test is a good goal. “Losing weight” or “doing better” are not good goals. Goals should, generally, be measurable so that you know without a doubt when you’ve achieved them.

There’s a bit of art involved in goal setting. You don’t want to set the bar too high or too low. Unreasonable goals are likely to end in frustration, undermining your motivation and putting you off the course to your dreams. On the other hand, if you fail to challenge yourself, you won’t grow. Apply these principles in all of your goal setting, and chart the path – step by step - to the life you want to live.

Setting and Achieving Goals: Principles

1. Take Care of the Inside, and the Outside Takes Care of Itself.

When we think of goals, we tend to focus on winning this or that award, getting a job or getting into a college, dating a certain someone, and other external things. Even when goals are about us, they’re usually something like “I want to lose 10 pounds” or “I want to bench 225”. All of these kinds of goals are great, but they’re not the best place to start. Your goal setting should start with who you are on the inside. When you build a positive mindset and robust physical health, achieving all of your external goals gets a whole lot easier. A great goal to start with is “I want to focus on solutions, rather than problems, and in doing so, generally think more positively about my life”. This is a concrete goal. Whenever you find yourself focusing on your problems, catch yourself, and will yourself to think about how you’re going to solve them. When you find yourself habitually focusing on solutions instead of problems, you’ve achieved your goal.

Another great goal is to improve your energy levels. Maybe you measure this by how many flights of stairs you can walk up before you feel fatigued, or by whether you still want to nod off during class. Think about how you'd lke to feel differently (less stressed, more positive, more awake) as you go about your days, and browse around ReEvolution. Hopefully we’ve got plenty of information and useful tools that will help you clarify and achieve your internal goals. If not, let us know what else you’d like to see, and we’ll attempt to provide it.