I am always very inspired and motivated by people who are consistently successful in what they do, both in life and fitness. In all areas of their lives they repeatedly show success in everything they put their mind into. They motivate me to stay focused on my personal and fitness goals.
Successful people are not born that way. They work hard, smart, consistently, persistently and with determination. Their methods in achieving success in their areas of expertise can be transformed and applied onto your fitness goals.
With the New Year 2016 approaching, we dream out many ideas and set many great goals. Let’s highlight the path to achieving them smoothly.
Be Objective and set SMART Fitness Goals
Make sure that you know what you want and why you want it. Create a realistic target that you can accomplish with a serious focus and discipline. Write your fitness goals down.
S… Specific
M… Measurable
A… Attainable
R… Relevant
T… Timely
Be specific, for example “I will join Gold’s Gym and workout Monday/Wednesday/Friday at noon”.
Make your fitness goals measurable and evaulate them regulary. It is easy to check off that you worked out those promised days, rather than measuring a non-specific goal such as “get in shape”.
Make your fitness goals attainable, realistic, something that you really can achieve if you put effort into it. Figure out how you can accomplish your goal, and then do it.
Make your fitness goal relevant to you. Is it something that YOU really want to become better version of yourself, or is it something that others think you should do? Relevant will make it important to you and it will be easier to stay with it.
Make it timely. Set a deadline. The time to accomplish things often expands depending on the deadline. If it is too far away, it takes us long time to do it. If you set it earlier, you will put all the anergy into making it on time and stay focused. Plan the steps and short-time frames to achieve the final deadline.
Take an Immediate Action
It is not enough to have a dream and goal if you never act on achieving it. Learning and preparing for the “right moment” won’t bring you the results that you want. You will never feel ready enough, so the best time to do it is NOW. Start doing, and you will finetune the process as you go. You will figure out the best way to achieve your goal. Absorb yourself in the process of the daily small steps toward your big goal.
Make Small Simple Continuous Improvements
Simplify your actions. Remember that it is more important to take a small action regularly and continuosly rather than doing big things randomly and irregulary. The compound effect of small daily actions will bring the biggest results over time.
Walking 20 extra minutes every day is better than one 2-hour walk on the weekend. Adding a few extra vegetable servings into your menu every day is better than stuffing yourself with the vegan buffet on Sunday night. Doing 100 squats and 200 crunches (10 minutes of your time) every day is better than killing yourself in the gym on Saturday morning and then be sore and do nothing for the rest of the week.
Figure out your “small daily actions” that you can uncomfortably do every day and do them!
Measure Your Progress
If you don’t know what you are doing and how it is going, how would you know if you are making progress? Track your eating and training habits. Create a spreadsheet or have a notebook where you check in every day you’ve eaten your broccoli and done your crunches. When you see how you are sticking to your fitness goals, it will motivate you to stay on it in those moments when you really don’t feel like doing the action. Because those times will come, and staying focused in those tough moments WILL strengthen your will power and self-esteem and it will make you feel proud of yourself. You will know that you can accomplish anything. Track your things daily, chart them weekly and monthly too. It is fun to see how far you have gotten.
Make Logical Decisions
Even though I am a firm believer in trusting your insticts because they often lead you right in many emotional situations, sometimes emotional decisions can lead you away from you goal. Sometimes heavy emotions lack conscious thoughts and are based on momentary feelings rather than mindful awareness. Don’t let your emotions blind your intelligence. When you feel more emotional than normally, slow down, think through, then act when you feel more balanced. It is not worth eating foods you shouldn’t or skipping your training just because you feel emotinally tired. Almost for sure you will regret your decision later.
Be Productive
Being busy doesn’t mean that you are productive. Busy is an excuse word for other people, it’s a lazy thinking. For you, you want to be productive. Create the most results in the shortest amount of time by planning, acting on your plan and sticking to it every day. Stay organized. Breathe and relax. Focus your mind on what you want. Visualize. Do the most important things first. Do not postpone and procrastinate. The results of your action is more important than the time it takes to accomplish it.
Be Satisfied with Excellence, Not Paralized by Perfection
Most of us want to be perfect. We have high personal standards and anything we do, we strive to achieve this perfection. There is nothing wrong with that, unless it paralyzes you in achieving results. Strive for perfection—run the extra mile, do the extra set, eat much better food—but be content with achieving excellence. Don’t get down on yourself when you don’t reach your percieved perfection level, don’t get discouraged from perusing your goal just because you don’t feel perfect.
Remind yourself that today you are better than you were yesterday because you took actions and you accomplished something. That is perfect in itself.
You get rewarded by accomplishing things, not by getting them perfect. Because “perfect” is in your mind, and the majority of things that you finish will feel imperfect. The better you are, the higher “perfection” standard you have. Thus you would never be satisfied. When you think “perfect”, translate it into acting on the task, learning from it, and repeating it again.
Get Used to Being Outside Your Comfort Zone
You never will feel ready for something. You will always feel that you have to learn more, prepare more, wait until this or that, and then you start. That will never happen. When you do something new and accomplish new things, you will always feel slightly uncomfortable. Just get used to the feeling. You may feel uncomfortable being in the gym, feeling sore and tired from the workouts, feeling unsocial when choosing a healthy meal when eating with friends…
Stay with your plan, focus, take the planned action every day and get comfortable feeling a little bit uncomfortable. You will get used to it. Becoming a better version of yourself makes you stretch out of your comfort zone and grow mentally and emotionally.
Remind yourself that feeling uncomfortable means that you are on the right track.
Stay Positive
Tough times and certain unpredictable situations happen. They may discourage you, but if you are prepared that things like this happen and stay focused through the situations, you strengthen your “positive thinking” habit. Learn from the negative situations, but always know that it will get better. The thoughts that are in your mind will create your future reality. Be mindful of your thinking and “correct” yourself if you catch yourself being less positive than you would wish.
Thinking positively about your future is a habit, and you may need to work on developing it until it becomes more natural to you.
Surround yourself with positive people who motivate you to accomplish your goals, who drive you to be better, who teach you how to look at the world in positive ways. My favorite leader Jim Rohn’s saying is “you are the average of the five people whom you spend the most time with”. Think about it. If you spend a lot of time with friends who eat poor diet, smoke and drink, you may be tempted to do the same. If you spend time with people who eat healthy and workout, you tend to do the same. Choose your friends wisely, because you will become like they are.
Don’t let your own negativity and the less postive friends to sabotage your success.Find and read books that inspire you. Talk to people that inspire you. And step by step, acting on your small daily actions, achieve your fitness goals.
Planning to eat healthier in 2016? Get “The Athlete’s Simple Guide to a Plant-Based Lifestyle“.
Planning to become a fitness and more vicious tennis player in 2016? Get “Tennis Fitness for the Love of it“.
Enjoy! Be awesome…
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