Random Notes/Opinion
TheHTN.com
Shift your focus to the process of achieving your goals By Jeff Blair Opinion: The jokes are flowing on social media and around the water cooler: another year of failed resolutions, the gyms have already cleared out, etc. I think it is good to have a sense of humor about everything, but I think there is also a lot of frustration, and even pain, in some cases behind the joking. What I see for many hard-working people in our community is a dual life: “side 1” and “side 2.” People have some great things going on “side 1.” Their career is going well. Family life is pretty good, and the kids are doing well in school. The economy seems stable at the moment. The stock market is off the charts, and your 401k looks great right now. “Side 2” is another story. “Side 2” is where you have gained twenty pounds in the past 10 years. Stress feels nearly constant here. There is no energy to do anything except get through the day and crash in front of the television at night. You may not even want to spend your evenings zoning out, but that seems to be all the energy you can muster. “Side 2” is where much of the joy of life is gone, and you wonder if it will
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ever return. In “side 2,” we look to our friends and neighbors and see the same pattern. In “side 2,” you tried that ninetyminute infomercial workout, but the kids’ games and recitals, work commitments and life just interfered. You lasted nine days. You followed a running program for six weeks, but eventually you dropped off, and you cannot even remember why. While you feel proud for all the good things in “side 1,” “side 2” is full of anxiety, worry and maybe even fear. You almost feel guilty wanting more, but sometimes you wonder with all the downside from “side 2,” if “side 1” is even worth it. The dream is maintaining all the great stuff from “side 1” and eliminating all the bad stuff from “side 2.” I have seen it happen many times, and often people don’t believe it is possible until they have achieved it. Most of us just don’t know how to get there, and we have limited time and energy to find reliable information. What is the bridge between “side 2” and “the dream?” Goal setting is the first step, but it is not enough. Implementing a process to achieve those
goals is where the rubber meets the road. If I could give only one piece of advice to achieve the dream, it would be: shift your daily and weekly focus from the end goal to the process of achieving the goal. While every motivational book ever written has a goal setting chapter, the process of reaching those goals is not discussed nearly as much. You set a goal…great. Now how are you going to achieve it? I can set a goal to go to China in 2018, but setting that goal does little. The process is what gets me there: searching for flights, searching for hotels, scheduling my vacation, buying the ticket, booking the hotel, getting to the airport on time and getting on the plane. The goal was a start, but meant nothing without the process. If you want to be more active in 2018, print out a checklist each Sunday with a box for each day of the week. Each day you exercise, check the box. At the end of each week, look at your results. Did you check 4 days? If you were at zero days or 2 days before, congratulate yourself. You made progress. What is the next step? If you want to become even more active, repeat
the same process. Print out the paper, check a box each day you exercise and try to increase your weekly checks from four to five or six. The great thing about this process approach is that you can use it to achieve any goal. As you become more advanced, the details might change, but the basic structure remains the same. The challenge for many is that the process for achieving the goals is not super exciting. Setting a goal to lose 20 pounds is exciting because it conjures images of what success would look and feel like. The daily process goals don’t have that same emotional hook, so human nature tends to discount them. Like many things in life, our intuition can be misleading. Shift your approach to focusing on the process and tell me how it goes. In fact, email me as soon as you do it at the address below. You deserve to keep all the good stuff from “side 1” and drop “side 2” in the dumpster. Before you start any fitness routine, consult your doctor. Jeff Blair (M.S.) is five-time Trainer of the Year, a published author and a former member of the Mens’ Fitness magazine Advisory Board. Reach him at jeffblair@jeffblairfitness.com for comments.
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