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Stop Focusing on Your End Goal, Focus on This Instead
Follow the process not the goal!
We’ve all done it before – set a goal that we think is realistic and achievable yet never gone on to make it a reality.
Goal setting is something everyone should be doing. BUT in order to move forward, we need a destination to travel to.
What’s missing though, and the reason we often fail to achieve these goals is that we don’t have a road map to direct us and keep us on track.
Looking at the bigger picture or the long term goal can be daunting and seem so far away. It’s easy to lose sight or interest after a while if you don’t feel like you are making progress…and this is where the problem lies.
When you are just so focused on the end result you fail to see the progress you’re making along the way. This is why we always celebrate the “small” wins and achievements at Foundry for each of our members, which you’ll see in our member round up, posted on social media every single week.
Someone who wants to add 5kg of muscle as their goal, may lose sight of this after a week or so if they feel like they’ve added nothing. Whereas if they’re seeing increases in how much they’re lifting, their food diary is getting better and more consistent and they’re turning up and training 3 x a week instead of once every 3 weeks, they’re going to keep going. These are noticeable changes and this is progress that will keep motivation and consistency high.
We need to focus on the process, break things down… work a month, week or even a day at a time and create habits that if we do repeatedly will help us achieve that long term goal.
Let’s look at an example…
“I want to lose 6kg within 12 weeks” – which is something we often hear (or something similar)
That goal is achievable and realistic. But where do you start with it?
If that’s all you have to go off and nothing else and you haven’t lost any weight in one week’s time, you’re probably going to feel disheartened and fall off the wagon.
Instead, break things down and set smaller milestones to keep you on track along the way. For example:
Monthly
- Weigh in to check progress
- Sit down with coach to check in and see where improvements could be made
- Achieve 2000 MEPs on MyZone
*
Weekly
- Hit 4 hours of exercise
- No more than 2 glasses of wine/pints per week
- Prep lunches on a Sunday and Wednesday evening
Daily
- Cut out office snacks for fruit
- Hit 10,000 steps
- Get off the tube one stop earlier every morning
*Something we do at Foundry gym is try and get our members to hit 2000 MEPs on Myzone every month (this is basically a points system and points are earned from exercising). This is a more tangible goal for members to achieve and we know that this is the sweet spot that will enable our members to achieve incredible results. You don’t have to have a Myzone system to do this though (it could be simply hitting 100,000 steps per month on your Fitbit for example).
If you can form all of these habits then you’re sure to be on your way to achieving the end goal and you can start ticking off the small achievements that you know are going to get you there.
Create your own personal road map to give yourself constant reminders daily, weekly and monthly to increase motivation and consistency. That way – if you miss a day or two (nobody’s perfect) then you know exactly how to get back on it and keep heading towards your end goal.
If you need any help creating a road map or with goal planning, then we are happy to help you – just give us a shout.
If you have any questions on the above or would like some advice on how we could help you with your fitness goal, don’t hesitate, visit our gym and try one of our semi private personal training sessions.
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