Are your health and fitness aspirations goals are wishes? I guess that depends on your definitions on either of those two words, but were going to use my definitions, and I’ll tell you which one is easier to attain.
I talk about New Years resolutions pretty often because I think they are so funny. I laugh at myself too because I have literally never kept one, but New Years resolutions are generally very…general. In the health and fitness field they are normally ‘start working out’ ‘lose 20 pounds’ or my favorite ‘eat healthier’. I worked at a restaurant for a while and we literally kept a higher stock of healthy foods during January and February because of these ‘eat healthier’ resolutions. By March of course we didn’t have to do that. These are all examples of wishes. I know they could be considered long term goals, but they are wishes in this context because you cannot accomplish them right now. Especially something like eat healthier because sometimes you cheat and then you are a failure (at least in your own mind) so you quit.
A goal is something a little different because it is something you can immediately accomplish or at least something you can draw up a plan for. Instead of ‘start working out’ you can find a workout plan to follow and make each movement on that plan a goal to do. Instead of ‘eating healthier’ you can decide what you are going to eat before your day starts so that each meal you have is a goal accomplished. These are steps you can take to get where you want instead of having to white knuckle every day trying to make healthy dietary decisions, or force yourself to go to the gym and do an hour long workout that you really don’t want to do. Make each lift a goal, and just focus on one at a time. One time I went through the insanity series (well worth it by the way) and there were plenty of times I wanted to skip ply-cardio extreme or whatever those workouts were called. The reason I didn’t wasn’t because I have superior will power to those who quit, but because my first goal was to put the DVD in and start the warm-up. After that it was cake..
Make things easy on yourself. Don’t stress yourself out by making the end result the next step. In other words loosing 20 pounds isn’t next on your list, deciding what you’re going to eat is, and then deciding what you’ll be doing in your workout. The end result is not about what you do some of the time it is about what you do all of the time. Fill your day up with goals to attain your wishes and try to hit as many as you can…just start with the first one.
Positive Imbalance 