All is not yet lost

Thoughts On Goals, Discipline and Momentum

I'm still reading the archives on Steve Pavlina's blog, and the article I read this morning was about goals and values.  Steve talks about how he sets goals first and then determines which values to focus on to get him there.  This seems like a useful strategy, so I started the day with writing down a list of big goals - everything I want to do in my life.  I also sorted them into the broad categories I like to think of things in - body, mind, heart, spirit.  And I think my most important goal for the near future is still focused on health - to develop a habit of exercising every day, eating healthy (which for me means lowcarb), drinking 8 glasses of water daily.  Other things I really want to do are journal daily and pray and read the Bible every day. 

See a common thread in these goals?  These are all habits I want to form and things I want to do everyday.  So the values I need to focus on are discipline, persistence, and focus.  And my main area of focus is health - both physical and mental health.  There's other stuff I want to do, and a lot of it is short to medium term stuff.  I want to develop a health-related website, and develop it into a source of income.  I want to be married in November - even though I really do not want to think about the planning that will be involved in getting there.  I do want to move to Lynchburg and find a job there.  Nonetheless, the health related goals are the ones I want to be focusing on primarily.

These are all also habits I've unsuccessfully tried to develop in the past.  And here's why I think this time it'll stick when in the past it hasn't.  In the past, I'd go all out for a few days, and then, I would miss a day or two, and never go back.  But the reason I never went back is because my attitude after I missed a day was that I had failed; that I might as well give up.  This time, though, I'm focused on developing the habit, not on achieving some ideal weight, or fitting into some skinny clothes, although those would be good milestones.  This time around, the important thing has been to develop the mindset that a healthy lifestyle is important to me.  So, even if my exercising has been limited to sucking in my gut while sitting on the couch, that's a step in the right direction, and a way to get back into my habit of walking 3 miles on the treadmill everyday. 

Building habits is all about momentum, and this time, even though I've lost the physical momentum, I've kept up the mental momentum.  That makes it easier to get back into the physical routine when I get back to something resembling a normal schedule.  At least, that's how I'm hoping it will work out.  I'll keep you posted as to how it turns out.

posted by TiredMama @ 5/20/2006 02:08:00 PM