I have discovered throughout my life how important it is to have goals and how essential they are for one to succeed.  I started noticing, though, how many of us have goals (which is wonderful) but sometimes we don’t put a solid foundation down as to how these goals will eventually be attained.  As we head into the New Year, I want to help you in reaching your goals for 2013.  Listed below are my favorite goal setting tools designed to help build that strong foundation that will ultimately result in success.  My latest goal is to race triathlons professionally and from my experiences throughout my life and from racing, I have put together a strategy outline that you can use to achieve any goal you can think up.  These steps have helped me immensely and I hope they will do the same for you. 

1) Goal Identification:
                a) Figure out what it is that you want to accomplish.  Develop benchmarks to keep you on track or to use along the way to gauge your progress.  Set a specific long-term goal and adapt your benchmarks as short- term goals that you can check off on your way to your long-term goal.  

2) Motivating Factors – definition:  to act as the motive for; the causative factor of; instigate, induce

                a) This is the reason, the force, which drives us or will drive us to attain our goals.  It could be in the form of a reward, to prove to yourself or to others that you can do something, the inspiration you receive from others, or possibly just the satisfaction of completing the task.  Motivating factors will help you push through the tough times.  I encourage you to re-visit these factors throughout your journey to remind yourself of what your inspirations mean to you. 

3) Perseverance – definition: to continue striving in spite of discouragements

                a)  This is the ability to push through diversity or difficult times in order to achieve your goal.  At times your perseverance will be tested to its limits but will be necessary to break down the roadblocks you face in order to fulfill the ultimate prize.  These next three items: Fear of Failure, Doubters, and I CAN’T – are the topics I feel are the ones most commonly associated with not attaining your goal.  Your ability to overcome these issues will be critical in your overall accomplishment of your goal.  I want to delve a little further into these subjects below.

                                i. Fear of Failure - Failure in our society has become a very negative word and I am not exactly sure why.  Instead of treating it as a negative word, reverse the perception and use it to your advantage.  So when you come up short don’t be afraid of it, embrace it.  Failure will happen - it is inevitable.  It’s not the failure portion that will make or break your quest to reaching your goal; it’s what happens after and how you react to it.  Are you willing to put the extra effort in to make sure the same outcome won’t happen again or are you going to do everything the same to ensure the same negative outcome?  I urge you to change your approach and look at it from a fresh perspective.  That is where the answer lies.  Don’t take failure as a negative, use it as a positive and learn from your experience and change your approach.  You didn’t fail, you ruled out one way that is not going to get you to where you want to go and you’re discovering the correct path.

                                ii. Doubters:  These people will be all around you.  Unfortunately, you will always have people telling you “you can’t do it”, “you’re not good enough”, or “you’re wasting your time.”  My point of view is, why not at least make an attempt and see for yourself.  Don’t let someone else’s comment deter you, especially since they haven’t done the homework like you did.  You have to live life on your own terms - not on someone else’s.  You don’t want to have any regrets when you’re taking your journey towards your goal.

                                iii. CAN’T: Remove this word from your vocabulary!  This is a self confidence, or as some believe, a laziness issue.  Never think that you can’t, anything is possible if you put your mind to it.  I do not believe the issue comes down to the fact that you can’t do something, I think what happens is that if the approach to the situation is off, you might be attacking the situation wrong.  Try it from a different direction.  Be creative, don’t let a can’t deter you.  Turn your can’t into a can.

4)Support System – Who are you going to have in place to help you attain your goal

                a) Your support system are the people you will surround yourself with to help you achieve your goal.  This group of individuals will help you through the toughest of times and help get you pointed in the right direction when things don’t seem to be going as planned.  These individuals can be your parents, siblings, teachers, pastors, coaches, friends and people you might never expect.

One motto I have lived by is: “Surround yourself with great people and great things will happen”

It’s the truth.  Embrace this group of people when they want to help and ensure that they feel included and a part of the process.  Continually thank them for their support.

Goal setting is critical when trying to attain all different levels of success throughout your life.  Setting up the proper goal setting outline will allow you to achieve your goals easier than just saying I want to do this or that.  Don’t get discouraged, no matter what road blocks are thrown at you during your journey, pull from everything you have put in place to help you through and keep moving forward.  You will get there.  You can do it.  Put your mind to it and it is amazing what one can accomplish.  Also, lead by example.  Help inspire others to reach their goals, be part of their support system (sometimes it is just as gratifying to see someone else reach their goal as it is to reach your own), help motivate them, and help them persevere through the rough patches.

DREAM BIG and then GO CAPTURE IT.

When trying to start to improve your overall health or begin a more active lifestyle, be patient.  The first couple of weeks might get you feeling tired, sore, and out of sorts.  That is normal, completely normal.  It will take a few weeks to a couple months for your body to catch up to your new schedule.  Make sure you keep your workouts fresh, try different things so you can see what really works for what your goals are.  Talk to others to see what has helped them through this part of training (My Two Cents: make sure you stretch and train with someone who knows what they are doing, you don't want to start bad workout habits).  Make small goals to accomplish at the beginning to help you along your way.  Once you make it through about 2 months of training you will be surprised that your body and mind  will be wanting you to workout.  So give it time, keep it fresh, and keep an open mind and you will surprise yourself at what your next workout goal will be.