What should you focus on to easily achieve your goal?

We always ask our members what their goals are and what they hope to achieve when they become more active.
As we often tell you, it’s important to know where you want to end up, otherwise you’re really never going to get there.
But, a goal is just an outcome. It’s an end result. So how do you get to that goal? Well, that’s determined by your behaviours.
As we all know, now more than ever, the world and our environment is pretty uncontrollable. Life has a tendency to just happen, and often, not quite how you’d want it to.
For instance, say you want to sell your house for a really good price. You refurbish it and decorate, put in new carpets, and tidy the garden. But, you can’t control the housing market or the price of mortgages! That example might be a bit too relevant at the moment.
You want to go for a lovely walk with friends and have lunch somewhere so you arrange it all but you can’t control the weather.
You want to lose weight and so you eat well and stay active but hubby books nights out with meals and holidays away that mean you don’t get to the gym as regularly as you’d like.
You can’t make your body lose 20 lbs on command any more than you can make sure your house is worth a certain amount when you sell it.
In other words, you can’t control the outcome. But what you can do is control the behaviours that lead to the outcome you want.
Here are examples of outcome goals and behaviours goals:
Outcome Goals |
Behaviour Goals |
Run a 5k race in 23 minutes | Run for 20 minutes 3 times per week for the next month |
Do 10 pushups
|
Start doing 4 pushups every day and add a pushup each week |
Eat 6 servings of veg every day | Write a list of veggies I like and make sure I buy them in this week’s shop |
Notice how all of the behaviour goals are a commitment to do a specific set of actions or tasks that lead to the outcome you want. You might want to run a 5k in a certain time but if you don’t train consistently, it’s just not going to happen.
Behaviour goals are small, manageable tasks that are within your control; and behaviour goals are often things that you can do right now, today or in the near future. You know, once we do them consistently, we normally call them HABITS!
You can’t control the outcome. But you can control the behaviours that, when done consistently, will lead to the outcome you want.