Be Goal Oriented

I don't care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don't harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you're never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.  ~ Zig Ziglar

I was flipping through an old Prevention magazine and read a story about some women who lost weight and felt younger after participating in a 12-week program.  I was berating myself for not having lost as much weight as these women have (have you noticed that I do that to myself a lot?), and wondering what I could do differently to speed up the weight loss.  I realized that part of the problem was that I didn't have a solid goal for the remainder of the year.

As I explained in a previous post, my exercise goal for the year was simply to exercise 80 days this year.  I achieved that goal in August.  I have some long-term exercise goals (next year's triathlon at the lake being the main one), but not short ones - the ones that kick you out of bed in the morning and yell at you to get moving.

I was thinking about this as I went to change the calendar in my bedroom when lo and behold!  I came to my own rescue.  In January, when I set my goal, I thought ahead and periodically wrote at the beginning of the month little notes like, "How many days now?", "Are you there yet?", and other encouragements.  On October, I'd written, "Have you reached your goal yet?  Can you double it?"  Wow!  I guess in January I knew just what kind of kick in the pants I'd need this month.

So, yes, my new goal for the rest of the year is to double last year's exercise days of 79 for the year.  Which means that to reach 158 days for the year, I have only 67 to go.  I can do that.

Hooray for thinking ahead and double hooray for short-term goal setting.  

What are your short-term goals?