Setting and Achieving a Goal
When you decide to work with a personal trainer and health coach for a lifestyle health behavior change, a common focus of your sessions will be your goals. These goals may be what brought you to a coach to begin with – you have an idea of what your success will look like but you’re not sure how to get there. You may also establish new goals while working with your trainer that you are excited to achieve. Goals are a celebration and oftentimes viewed as the most important, but it is important to remember that achieving your goal is a culmination of all of the effort that you put in with your coach over several weeks, months, or possibly years. We visualize how it will feel to reach the goal but figuring out how to get there is imperative.
So, what are goals and why are they important? According to dictionary.com, a goal is, “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end”. Simply put, a goal is the noun; it is a flashy, shiny thing that puts stars in our eyes when we think about it. The term ‘goal setting’ is used extensively in the health and fitness industry, but often its meaning can be lost in programs, macros, meal plans, and weights. There is initial excitement when a goal is first set – we’re excited to envision ourselves completing the goal and how we’ll feel once we do. Whatever goal is set, we think about the outcome and where we’ll be in three months, six months, or a year once the goal is met. But, after a few days or weeks, the initial excitement can wear off. We can lose focus of the goal as we’re putting in the work. The work becomes tedious and the goal can seem out of sight or too far away. We miss a day and think that we’ll be able to make up the missed work some other time. However, this can all add up until the goal is forgotten or pushed further into the future. The goal is the end, but how do we get there?
Though it is extremely important to set goals for ourselves to work toward so we know where we’re going, it is perhaps more important to focus on the journey – the follow-through. In the above example, the goal is the shiny light at the end of the tunnel, but the follow-through is the unseen hard work and grit in the darkness of the tunnel. It is often unnoticed by the outside world and it’s not pretty or shiny like the goal. Often, we don’t think about the follow-through when we’re setting the goal and it can drag us down once the initial excitement of goal-setting wears off. However, without the follow-through we cannot realize our full potential of meeting the goal. Again referencing dictionary.com, follow-through is defined as, “the act of continuing a plan, project, scheme, or the like to its completion”. Follow-through is the verb; it is the action of directing our efforts to enact our plan to reach the achievement of completing our goals. It is the running of the race to reach the finish line – the goal. And it is a continuous effort; it is days, and weeks, and months of planned hard work through the darkness.
So, how do we endure the journey to reach the light? We schedule time with ourselves to enact our plan, whether that time is set aside every day or a few days each week. We stick to the plan as much as we can – life happens, but we have an action plan ready to set us up for success when curveballs are thrown our way. We set micro-goals so we have victories along the way to remind us of how important our goal is and how extraordinary it will feel to meet the goal. We surround ourselves with a support team who understand our desire to achieve our goal and can help build us up when the journey gets tough. And we keep digging through the dark tunnel with grit and passion so one day we can reach out and grasp onto our shiny goal and declare it complete.
Completing a race or accomplishing a health and fitness goal is a celebration of your commitment to your plan and a celebration of discovering all that you can accomplish. You have already put in the work and stuck with your plan. Enjoy every moment of your race and accomplishment - you have earned it!
