Get Fired Up to Achieve Your Goals!

One of the most important things you need to do before embarking on your goal-getting journey is to know your why.  Most likely, you already have an idea of what your why is because you started thinking about this goal or you have been dreaming about it for a long time.  But we need to go deeper than just one sentence.  For example, if your goal is to just get out of debt and your why is so you don’t have to make payments anymore - we need to dive deeper.  Why don’t you want to make payments anymore?  What does it mean to you to keep that additional money in your pocket each month?  What kind of life are you envisioning when you no longer have those payments?

So before we dive into how we get to the depth needed to really achieve a goal, let’s first talk about why it is important.  Whenever we set out on a goal, it is going to have ups and downs.  While you might be able to sail through the good times with ease, when you hit a speed bump it is going to be hard to stay the course.  This is why so many people fail to meet their new years resolution.  They literally quit within a couple of weeks or never start at all.  This is what happens when you just say words like “I want to lose weight.”  Sure, that is all good and fun until it is actually time to start eating the salad.  It is imperative that you attach your goal to something deeper, something that can hold you on track when you want to jump off. Something to remind you why you started.  Something strong enough to get you started.  I know when I was starting out on my journey it took me a long time to actually START - so having a strong why will help push you to get started. 

Let’s take the example of running a marathon.  A marathon is 26.2 miles.  It is LONG.  It is HARD.  And when you are ready to give up at mile 19.5 you need something to help pull you to the end.  That is where your why comes in.  Why did I sign up for this?  Why did I train for this?  How will I feel when I am done?  Why is this goal important? And the why doesn’t come into play just during the marathon itself, but also in the months of training.  Why am I training?  So that I don’t die on race day! (sort of funny, sort of true).

Sometimes your why is so deep that you cry. Sometimes it is so deep that you are just plain MAD.  These emotions are important!  They are critical to ensure you stay on track.  Are you mad because you gained 20+ pounds and you can’t do the things you want to do?  Are you frustrated because you don’t like the person you see in the mirror?  Are you sad because you’ve allowed yourself to get so far into debt that you can barely make ends meet?  Don’t ignore these emotions!  I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to feel these emotions.  Acknowledge them!  And write them down so that you will remember how you felt.  These emotions are a huge catapult to actually getting started which can be the hardest part of all!

So let’s start figuring out your why.  You want to start simply by asking yourself “why is this goal important to me?”  And then keep asking yourself why until you have some very real emotions coming up.  Besides why, here are a bunch of questions you can ask yourself:

• What things will change if you achieve this goal?  
• What has to change in order for you to pursue this goal?
• What do you think your life would look like if you achieved that goal?
• What pain is this causing you right now because you have not achieved the goal?
• What do you anticipate your obstacles being?
• Who else do you need to be on your side in order to achieve the goal? 
• Who else is hurting by your not having achieved this goal?
• On a scale of 1-10 one being the least amount of confidence and 10 the most, how confident are you that you can achieve this goal?
• Why did you choose that number?
• What are some different ways you have thought about taking to achieve this goal?
• How quickly do you want to achieve this goal?
• What are some things that might be sacrificed as a result of you pursuing this goal?

Take out your journal (or any piece of paper) and start digging into your why.  Turn off all distractions and set a timer for a minimum of 30 minutes and just start writing.  Let it all out, sister!

Once you have all the thoughts and emotions on paper - you have your why!  This will be your foundation to setting your goal.  From here, take everything you have just written out and summarize it in a sentence or two.  Put that on a sticky note, or just inside your journal - somewhere that you can revisit these sentences over and over again.  You don’t want to forget your why!  This is your fuel to your fire.  This is going to push you to start and it is going to push you to keep going when you want to give up!  You know that saying “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired”?  Well, that saying is exactly what we are driving at here.  When you are FED UP with life the way it is - THIS is when you make change.  If you are not emotionally invested in changing, you will not change!  I sometimes tell people to get pissed off!!  Because when you do, that is when you have enough fuel to push forward.

And that is exactly what happened to me each time I needed to drive to hit a goal.  I had to finally get fed up with my current situation so that I had the fuel to push forward.  When I first said I wanted to lose weight it was quite some time before I actually did anything about it.  It wasn’t until I was just so sick of feeling and looking how I felt and looked that I made the change. *a side note about “looks” - I know we all should love ourselves the way we are, but the fact is, we don’t always.  The important thing is that we don’t allow “looks” to be the only reason we are doing something.  Women are socialized to take such a harsh look at themselves - if we aren’t perfectly skinny with flat abs, then we aren’t good enough.  For me, when I started to move my body and gain confidence, I started to love my body more and more.  My focus shifted from how I look to how strong my body is and what it can do for me, and THAT is a beautiful thing. 

Here is another fun fact for you - your why is likely to change over time.  Your why may start out as “I want to lose weight” and it might morph into “I want to be healthy enough to run around with my grandkids when I am 70.”  Mine changed from just wanting to lose weight, to actually wanting to FEEL good and maintain a healthy lifestyle.  It changed from just wanting to lose weight to never wanting to have severe back pain again.  It changed from wanting to just lose weight to having energy to get through each day without feeling exhausted.  And as I noted above, it changed from a focus on looks to a focus on strength.

You start where you are.  You start by digging deep in the emotions you are currently in and you use that as fuel to keep going.  This is the magic sauce.  This is where the grit comes in to stay the course.  It isn’t always going to be easy, but it is always going to be worth it.