Fresh!

Happy New Year!  By the time this is posted, I will be heading off on vacation.  BUT.  I can talk about goals before I go!

Yesterday I wrote about taking a snapshot of where we are now.  Today, we are going to ask ourselves the important question:  where do we want to go next?  This can be a difficult question, fraught with even more Big Feelings than the snapshot process.  More important stuff to remember:  it does not matter how we arrived in this place; we are not here as punishment, or even as reward.  We are not better or worse people for being in this particular state of health or fitness or whatever.  It may help to imagine that we suddenly woke up on this very strange planet and all we need to do is decide whether we like it here or not.  If we do, great!  Nothing to worry about:  carry on.  If not, we have to decide what would help.

Of all the ways there are to structure goals, there are two that I find particularly useful, especially if we use them together.  One is the results-focused goal.  Most of us think of this kind when we consider goals.  An example:  I want to lose 20 pounds over the next three months.  This is a pretty good-looking goal.  It is measurable.  It has a time-frame.  It is reasonable (weight loss, to be healthy, should be about 1-2 pounds per week, so 20 pounds in 12 weeks is on the aggressive end, but still doable).  What it lacks is a how.  This is where the other kind of goal comes in.  It is called a process goal.  Losing weight, as we all know by now, requires a calorie deficit—we have to burn more than we eat.  A process goal that would work with the above results goal might be:  I am going to get 30 to 60 minutes of cardio exercise five days a week, stop eating dessert after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and lift weights twice a week to create a 500-calorie per day deficit.  This is also a pretty good goal, although some tracking would be useful to figure out if the processes chosen will result in the deficit and/or weight loss we’re looking for.

What I like about results goals is that we know what we’re aiming for in the big picture.  Because they measure big picture things, though, not hitting results-goals can be anything from demoralizing to downright depressing, no matter how much we talk to ourselves about refining the process and working some more.  This is where process goals have our back.  We can tell if we’ve been doing that cardio or not.  If we’re not getting the results we want, we haven’t failed at the task, just at figuring out the right process to use.

No matter what, we have to remember that we are valuable right now, without a single goal in sight.  If we knock our goals out of the park, good on us, but we’re not suddenly much more valuable.  If we crash and burn—good news!—we are still miraculous human beings.

As always, I am here to help set goals and go through the process with anyone interested.  We can get where we want to go.