Putting the FORCE back into your LIFE through group fitness programs

The danger is not to set your goal too high and fail to reach it, it’s to set it too low and reach it.

Michelangelo

•  Specific:

You can’t achieve something if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve. The more specific you can be here, the easier it is to know what you’re aiming for & to know what you have to do to make it happen. When your driving somewhere using a map, just having the suburb isn’t enough for you to feel confident that you know you’re on the right road of not. You need to know the suburb, road & street number before you can know for absoute certain where your going, how to get there & how long you can expect it to take.

•  Measurable: In Numbers

Putting a number to your goal is a very powerful way of further pin pointing what your trying to achieve. A number is not negotiable, it’s black & white, precise, yes or no, absolute. More importantly however, a number is something that you can understand very easily, you can track your progress against it & it’s something that you will know without a shaddow of doubt if you’ve achieved it or not. Later we’ll talk about identifying your starting point, which you may not be happy to see right now. However seeing that number then move closer & closer to your target number, is something that has to put a smile on your face.

Without a number, your goal is probably going to be too vague. If you say “I’d like to be fitter”, how much energy does that have for you? Also, how will you know how much fitter your getting & if you’ve ever reached your goal? However if you say “I’d like to be able to run 10km in under 1 hour” or “I’d like to have a resting heart rate of 60 bpm”, how much energy does that create? Suddently there is something much more tangible to work with, something you can see & feel.

•  Believable:

You must beleive that you can achive it. It cannot be too much that you can’t say to yourself without hesitation ‘You know what? Yeah, I can actually do that!’ If you don’t believe deep down that you can achieve it, then why would you put any effort into it. When the going get’s tough, why would you put in the effort if you don’t think it’s ever going to really happen?

You make your goal just out of reach from what you can comfortably achieve without any effort at the moment. This is going to make you think, “Wow, that’s not so big a deal, I can do that”!

However, you may also have huge dreams & visions of achieving goals of mamoth proportions that you do really want ot have. Unfortunately you cannot really see yourself doing it, not with any feeling behind it. You don’t have to abandon them completely, those goals are still awesome to have! I call them the ‘big hairy audacious goals’ & you MUST have them, keep hold of them & NEVER let them go. What is so great about them is that they drive you to achieve more than you ever thought possible. It’s true, didn’t you just say that you can’t actually see yourself achieving it. The thing to be comfortable with though, is that those are goals that you may never actually reach. And that’s ok! It may seem to go against why you’re doing all this in the first place, I mean, your setting these goals so you achieve them right? Yes that’s true; however you must remember that the real happiness comes from the process of achieving the goal, not the goal itself. ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey’ remember, the achievement is just icing on the cake.

Think about it, setting your standards so high that you don’t achieve them is not necessarily a bad thing. Imagine that you set a goal that you want to run a marathon. You’ve identified that your starting position is that you can currently run 1km & you know you have 41 more kilometers to go. You try & try, however the best you can ever eventually manage is 38 kilometers. If you’ve remembered to focus on the process & not on the actually goal, you would be absolutely ecstatic to know that you have improved your running by 37 kilometers. You will also feel proud of yourself for pushing your body to your absolute limit. If you hadn’t set your big hairy audition goal in the first place, you’d still only be able to run only 1 km.

What you do need to do then, is set sub-goals that are stepping stones along the way to your big hairy audatious goal. That is, set small enough goals, that you can see yourself (without hesitation) achieving now! Then again & again…

• Make it Real:

Writing it down is an absolutely crucial component of the process as well. You can have all of the greatest thoughts & dreams in the world, however until they become a physical reality in some way, they can never be achieved. Writing your goal down, as clearly & specific as possible is the first step to making your dream real.

A written goal is something that you can look at, touch & feel. Something that you can pin up on the fridge or wardrobe, even frame it. What ever you do with it, it occupies physical space in reality now & has energy. More importantly, it’s something that you can show to others. Now if that scares you, then it’s quite probable that it’s something that you don’t believe you can achieve. You’re afraid to show someone because you don’t think you’ll achieve it & then those people will know you’re a failure. The temptation is to keep it to yourself so no-one will know if you fail or not. Although, can you listen to how that sounds? How are you going to put any real effort into it, if you’re not convinced that you can achieve it.

If that’s the case, you’ve set your goal too high. Make your goal believable & make it public! As long as you can believe you can achieve it, then when you tel people the feeling will be of excitement of the achievement, not the fear of failure. Which one of those feelings do you think will give you more motivation?

• Next Step – What is your starting point?