Whenever you have a goal, there’s something that you can track. You should pick something that you can track. If you’re trying to change your body composition, something you can track is your body fat or your body weight. It changes every day. You can track it at a specific interval.
The point is, you have something to track and you’ll get excited about seeing that move in the right direction. When there’s excitement, you’re more likely to engage in the activities that bring you that result.
If you want the scale to go down because that’s what excites you, you’re more likely to stick to your diet, look at the food that you’re eating today and even though you want to eat a pizza or you don’t feel like eating the chicken and rice that you normally eat, you know in your head, in your mind that eating this food and staying off the junk is going to bring you that result of dropping weight on the scale. That’s going to bring you your excitement that ties in with the passion, or the drive, or the thing that YOU actually really want inside.
Pick something. Let’s say you want to travel somewhere. There’s a destination that you’ve always wanted to go to. It’s in Europe or Asia or something, some tropical paradise. Wherever you want to go, picture that place. In order to get to that place, you have to save money. You have to save money to buy a ticket to go to this place. Let’s say the plane ticket is 10,000 dollars, like something ridiculous. There are things that you have to engage in in order to get the 10,000 dollars because this is no ordinary plane ticket.
You want this 10,000-dollar ticket, which is no small amount of money. It’s more than you’ve ever paid for a plane ticket and you know that, okay, you have a goal, 10,000 dollars. Along the way, you’re going to have to go to work. You’re going to have to skip out on going out with your friends sometimes, going to the club, going out to eat, or just spending money on random things that you don’t necessarily need. You know you’re going to have to make some sacrifices.
Along the way, because let’s say this trip is two years from now, the length of time really gets to people. Two years from now is not really immediate. It’s so far out of reach that you start to lose your motivation to do it because you’re not excited anymore. The initial excitement is gone. Two years is too long, too far away for you to be excited about something. If you pick something to track or pick something related to your goal that’s between now and then, that will get you excited. It renews that motivation for you to keep doing what you’re doing.
If it’s 10,000 dollars maybe your first shorter goal is a thousand dollars. You can actually see that a thousand dollars is within reach. Maybe it’s within a month or two months and you can see the bank account moving. You can see it moving closer to a thousand dollars.
It’s way closer than two years and 10,000 dollars, and it’s close enough for you to get excited and renew your motivation to do what you’re doing. It’s close enough to push you through those sticking points where you don’t want to go to work and where you don’t want to save your money and you just want to go out. When you don’t want to save your money and just want to go out and shop and spend money on things that you actually don’t really need. If your goal is far away, as most goals are, pick smaller things within them that get you excited, that bring about a feeling inside of you in order for you to stay motivated.
