Why do we always set goals that have nothing to do with who we are and what our lives are like? It frustrates me so much about my self but I’ve gradually stopped setting impossible goals and it’s so transformative to set goals that you can actually achieve.
Here’s the thing, you can do anything. You can achieve anything. What you cannot do is achieve things instantly, except with magic or extreme luck. I think sometimes when you say to someone to tone a goal down, what they hear is “You can’t do that”. I want to assure you that whatever it is, you absolutely can- you just have to be smart about how you proceed.
There are a million ways for you to figure out how to break a goal down, and I want to talk about an easy one and one of my favorites- using an anchor.
An anchor a routine or habit in your life that is unlikely to change quickly. It can change, like anything can- but it’s such a part of your life and routine and it likely won’t change in the beginning stages of setting your goal. So for example, if you have a job with fixed hours and you have to be at your desk at 9am, that’s going to be an anchor for a weekday morning goal. It is with that in mind, that you can start crafting your goal.
Say you want to start working out every weekday morning, rather than allowing your goal setting self to be like “I am going to wake up at 4.30 and work out for 90 minutes”, tap into your anchor. If you usually wake up at 7.30 to get to work on time, it will make more sense to wake up no more than an hour earlier, so it’s not such a dramatic change to your routine- all of a sudden by moving your goal to a 45 minute workout at 6.30, you’re more likely to stick to it.
By starting from your anchor, you also need to focus on the things in place that are already helping you succeed with that. If you get to work on time, what helps you? If you’re already sacrificing sleep for your anchor, will adding a new goal be useful? Or would it be better to figure out a better time or a different goal? So in this case, can the workout be in the evening instead? Can it be weekends instead? Can you start going to bed earlier? Once there is a fixed thing in place first, it’s easy to identify the things that will make it harder for you to achieve your goal.
Your goal cannot be your anchor. I know it’s tempting, but until you establish a routine, you need things to help you establish it, the routine won’t suddenly create itself and it’s the magical thinking that it can that stops so many people from being able to set goals they can achieve!
Let me know if you try this :)