The Means to Get to the Ends

The other big reason to be specific with your goals is because doing so will help you to know what to do to meet your goals. I turned 50 while writing this blog. One of my big goals for my first year as a 50-year-old is to break the American record for 10 miles for a man of my age. That time is 52:24, which is just a bit faster than 5:15 per mile. So I know that I need to do some training at or faster than that pace to reach that goal. Contrast that goal with if I just said that I wanted to run a fast time for 10 miles. What does that mean? How fast? How would I know what to shoot for in my training? The same principles apply to your short-term goals. Do you want to be able to run five miles without stopping two months from now? OK, then you know that to get to that goal, you need to work up to three miles, then four miles, and so on at a pace that you can handle, rather than concentrating on how fast you’re running.

When you meet that short-term, three-month goal, give yourself a break! Promise yourself a meaningful reward while you’re working toward the goal, then give yourself that reward when you meet it. The reward could be a nice dinner at your spouse’s expense, or a new piece of running apparel, or a book or CD that you’ve wanted for a long time.
Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t meet your goal. Instead, be honest about how much progress you made and evaluate why you didn’t quite get to where you wanted. I might have a goal of running a certain time at an important race that’s three months away. If I don’t perform as well in the race as I had wanted to, I pat myself on the back for what I did achieve in the race and then look at where and why I fell short. Did I set too tough of a goal? Was it unreasonable of me to expect to be at this point in three months based on my fitness when I started working toward the goal? Did I not work hard enough?

Did I do the wrong types of things to get me to my goal? Ask these kinds of questions, and remember: You’ve almost undoubtedly made some progress. Say your goal was to be 15 pounds lighter at the end of three months, but you’ve lost 10 pounds. That’s still a tremendous achievement! Focus on congratulating yourself for what you have done, not beating yourself up over where you might have fallen short. Then learn from your experience and move on toward your next goal.