HOW TO SET REALISTIC GOALS AND HOW TO ACHIEVE THEM

Goals play an important role in our personal development and motivate us to work hard towards defining our own success. Setting goals requires discipline, time and a desire to make personal change. To achieve your goal(s) it needs to be realistic as that will help you understand exactly what the goal is about and why that goal feels important to you.

To help you set realistic goals, I will use weight loss as an example to understand the importance of setting realistic goal

R – Be REAL

Before setting a goal you have to be REAL and honest with yourself. If your goal is to lose weight or develop an effective fitness routine, ask yourself these questions. Why do I want to lose weight? Why is this goal important to me? What actions am I willing to take to lose that weight? Will joining the gym be necessary to help me lose weight? What are my favourite exercises that will help me achieve my goal? How is my diet going to contribute towards losing the weight? How much weight do I want to lose every month to achieve my ultimate goal? Why do I want to have a fitness routine? All these questions are necessary because they help you be REAL with yourself and train your mind to set goals that are realistic and discipline you to actually work hard towards achieving your goal. Remember this quote when setting your goal(s) “You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found on your daily routine”.

E – EXPECT positive results

Visualising your own success plays a huge role in expecting positive results. No matter what you do expect the results to be positive and focus on the positive. If you approach your goal with a negative mind-set, you will feel miserable and unmotivated to work hard towards achieving it. In terms of weight loss, if you want to be a size 30, visualise yourself being like that. Imagine yourself walking around the beach in a sexy bikini and in no time you will be walking in that bikini and owning it. Always be positive, patient and persistent.

A – ACCEPT that you are not perfect

Striving to achieve a goal from a perfectionist perspective will not do you any good. As humans we are not perfect and the sooner we accept that the better. When it comes to achieving your goal(s) actions count more even if they are not perfect. This basically means turning your goal into a habit. Fitness is a habit. Turn going to the gym a habit. Turn eating healthy into a habit and it will eventually become much easier for you to achieve without turning into a perfectionist because it is now part of your daily lifestyle and mistakes are acceptable. Habits and achieving goals go hand-in-hand – it is much easier to achieve a goal that is part of your daily habit.

L – LOVE yourself

Self-love is important in anything you do. If you don’t love yourself when you are overweight trust me when I say you won’t love yourself when you are slim. Feel comfortable in your own skin no matter your body size and that will motivate you to work harder to achieve your desired body size. Vincent van Gogh once said “What is done is love, is done well”.

I – It seems IMPOSSIBLE until it is done

Achieving your desired fitness regime always seems impossible until it becomes a routine/habit. When I decided that I wanted to be fit, it was very difficult and I always looked for an excuse not to go to the gym or for a morning jog (oh it’s cold today therefore I can’t go to the gym, I had a busy day at work and all I want to is watch TV instead of going to the gym etc.). It was excuse after excuse because it seemed impossible and I didn’t visualise the positive results. Stop with the excuses and start taking action. When I stopped with the excuses and started learning what exercises I like (I'm personally a fan of cycling), my eyes where all of a sudden open. Fitness became a habit. Reach that level and you will realise that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it.

S – STICK to your goal

Sticking to your goal takes discipline. Focus will make you stick to your goal. Having a certain direction will motivate you to stick to your goal. Discipline, Focus and Direction will make achieving your goal much easier. Once those three elements are imprinted in mind you will be a GOAL DIGGER.

T –Give it TIME

Achieving your goal takes time. If you rush into achieving your goal without getting the results you desire that will lead to frustration. And when your goal frustrates you, you will sub-consciously begin pulling away from it, without realising it and soon you will begin asking yourself, why haven’t I achieved this goal? What went wrong? Give it time. Be patient and persistent at the same time.

I – IMPROVE your bad habits

It takes 21 days to break a bad habit. Honestly, bad habits stand in the way of setting goals and taking consistent actions to achieve them. To break your bad habits, firstly you need to identify that habit and acknowledge it. Only through acknowledgement will you be able to find effective strategies to break that bad habit. Once you get rid of a bad habit replace it with a good habit. For example, if your aim is to start eating healthy, identify the type of junk food that is making it hard for you to start eating healthy. Replace ice-cream with plain yoghurt with pieces of fresh fruit, replace eating McDonald’s with a home-made salad. Replace the bad with the good until the good becomes a new habit. Its not easy but its worth it.

C – CHALLENGE yourself

Always challenge yourself to go beyond your limits. In life you compete with yourself and no one else. Challenge yourself (not your friend) to be better than you were yesterday. Remember this when you want to challenge yourself:

·       If you don’t challenge yourself, you will never realise what you can become

·       Never let yourself get too comfortable in your current situation. Seek challenges, push yourself and ignore what others think

·       Constantly challenge yourself

·       Realise that there is a difference between who you are and who you want to be

·       Push yourself because no one will do it for you. No one will help you work towards achieving your goals except for you

·       The bigger the challenge - the bigger the opportunity

To finalise everything, remember to make a plan and take action. If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan not the goal. Consistency will get you far in life. A girl boss works hard and never quits until it is done.