How Setting Goals Can Make You Awesome

First and foremost, goals make you accountable.

Even the rather vague, useless goal of “I want to lose weight” at least gives you some sort of direction. Without goals, you essentially have no purpose for training or dieting.

By making your goals SMART, you also set yourself up for success.

Too often people tell themselves they’d like to do something, but whatever that is can just seem too far out of reach. Sitting down with a pen and paper, and writing everything down actually focuses your mind, and makes you think “Yeah, maybe I CAN do this.”

Break your big goal down into mini goals

The next stage in goal setting is to break your big goal down into mini goals. This should be done in two ways.

Firstly, you can set yourself results-based goals. These are your typical “lose x amount of fat,” “gain so-and-so pounds of muscle” or “improve my 10k time by…..”

Your initial SMART goal will probably be a fairly lofty one. Most people do set their main goal as a large amount of weight loss, or to achieve their dream physique. This is fine, and having an ultimate goal is great, but you need to take baby steps first.

This could be something as simple as breaking down a 30 pound weight loss into losing 5 pounds per month for the next 6 months. A muscle gain goal could be made more tangible by aiming for 2 pounds of weight gain a month, while shaving time off a personal best should be given clear stepping stones of 10, 20 or 30 second improvements, rather than aiming to knock five minutes off in one go.

Secondly, you need behavioral goals

To reach your results-based goals, you must have behavioral goals. That weight loss, muscle gain or new gym personal best won’t happen on its own.

Behavioral goals set you up to actually DO something.

For weight loss, these could be – Eat a lean protein at every meal, eat at least five portions of green vegetables every day and train for 45 minutes, three times per week.

See Also: How To Set New Fitness Goals? Try These 8 Fitness Tests

The final step in making sure you’re on point with goal setting is to tell people what you’re going to do. This gives you some accountability, and ensures that other people know about what you’re doing, so can support you and give you a helping hand should things get tough along the way.