With the success of my last 90 day Body Transformation Challenge, I have been getting many questions about how to start a training program. Many people have asked me how they can get into better shape. The problem is they don't know where to begin. Or they don't know how to keep themselves motivated long enough to complete their fitness goals. These people start their fitness training with the best intentions, yet after a few days or weeks, their enthusiasm wears off - and they feel dejected.
I began writing this article with the focus on how to start and complete a fitness training routine. The more I wrote, the more I realized that these rules can be used to accomplish any goals. So instead of a how-to fitness article, this article will give you the fundamentals on what it takes to set and successfully complete any goal.
The process of achieving your goals can be summarized in my Success Formula: Successful Goal = Actions * Discipline.
Let's look at how these components interact with each other by breaking them down into a three stage process. The three stages are the "start" the "middle" and the "end."
The Start
To successfully start and finish any task, you must first have a goal. You must begin with the end in mind. There are two main types of goals: broad or long-term goals and specific or short-term goals. Broad goals are more encompassing. They tend to look at your distant future. For example, "what is your life goal?" Specific goals look at things within a more immediate time frame - "what do I want to accomplish this month, week or today?"
The broader the goal, the broader the action steps you can take to achieve that goal. Conversely, the clearer the goal, the more specific the steps you must take. For example, you may have a broad, long-term life goal: "to live a healthy and active lifestyle." With this goal, there are many paths you can take to complete it. A broad goal gives you more options. It increases your likelihood of success because you have the benefit of both time and options. Now, let's make this goal more specific: "to be in shape so that I can run the LA marathon next year." This goal limits your options. You can see that you would be focusing your training on running, losing weight and building up your endurance. And more specifically, you have a specific time-frame to complete this goal which further limits your action steps.
The proper way to set up a goal is to include the goal along with a time frame. The longer the time available to complete the goal, the more broader the goal can be and the more options you have to complete the goal. The shorter your time frame, the more specific your goal must be and the fewer options you have to complete the goal.
When we set goals and fail to achieve them, we tend to automatically assume that we are the problem. We cannot achieve that goal, because we are "unworthy" or "incapable." We fall into the "failure mindset." The problem with successfully achieving goals, does not have to do with who we are, but with setting up the right goals and also with aligning our expectations to match the type of goals we set. By failing to do this, we create a conflict between our desires and expectations.
The solution to this problem is to match our goals with our expectations. We do not want to set up long-term goals and expect short term results. For example, when it comes to finances, you may set up a goal of "having financial freedom". If you fail to acknowledge that this is a long-term goal, you may feel disappointed if you are not rich by next week. In the same vein, imagine you set a goal of "saving $1000 this month." If you were to successfully complete this goal, you may feel confused about what to do next because you have not set a long term financial goal. This confusion is the basis for living an non-fulfilling life.
The key is to have both long-term goals and short-term goals and to understand what we can expect from them. Long-term goals have different results from short-term goals. A useful way to understand the differences is to realize that long-term goals provide the framework or foundation for living your life - they answer the question "why?" Short-term goals narrow your focus and give you more specific action steps - they answer the question, "how?"
For benefits on answering the question why, read my article, "Find Your Life Purpose: Ask Yourself Why."
Desires
Where do our goals originate? Our deepest goals come from our desires. Our desires originate from our higher consciousness - in the non-physical realm. Our most fulfilling goals are the ones that are aligned with our truest desires. The majority of us have goals that are set by society, parents, friends. Think about the goals you have in life. Are they your goals? Or are they someone else's goals? If you are living your life according to someone else's goals, then you are not living your life - you are living their life; therefore, you cannot live a fulfilling life.
To life your own life, you must set your own goals. To make the goal yours, you must understand why you want that particular goal. To understand why you want the goal is to understand your desires. To understand your desires is to understand yourself. It is the age old philosophy: "Know Thyself."
Knowing why we want a goal makes the goals our own. It gives us ownership and thus responsibility of the goal. For example, it is not enough to have a goal: "to live a healthy life." By answering why you want this goal: "I want to live a healthy life so that I have the strength and energy to life a long, fulfilling and happy life - so that I may play with my grandchildren and see them grow up" - you have made the goal yours. You have given your goal meaning.
Meaning is the glue that holds everything together and brings the separate parts of our being into life. Without meaning, we simply have isolated parts. Meaning is the answer to how our goals coordinate with our desires. It is the "cosmic dance" of the non-physical and physical realms of our beings. Meaning is what takes a desire and turns it into a burning desire. It takes hope and turns it into faith. It takes a belief and turns it into a conviction. It takes a should and turns it into a must.
Motivation
Your desires along with the reasons why you want to achieve them equals your motivation. Your motivation is the "build-up" of energy. A good way to think about starting a goal is to think about the Law of Motion. Force = Mass * Acceleration. Motivation is the mass in the equation. The bigger your motivation, the bigger your mass, the more force you can generate to take action.
We all know how important motivation is for us to achieve our goals. The more motivated we are, the easier it seems to begin a goal. Therefore, it is advantageous for us to understand how to increase our motivation. Our motivation is our desires and our meaning. To increase your motivation, understand your deepest desires and improve your meaning associated with obtaining these desires.
Motivation = desires + meaning.
Courage
Now that we have a burning desire to achieve our goals, we can add the spark necessary to propel this desire into motion. This spark is courage. Courage is the acceleration in the formula: Force of action = Mass * Acceleration. We need courage to take action. Without courage, our desires will remain in the non-physical realm. Courage brings our desires into the physical realm so that we may enjoy them.
Think of courage as your values combined with your faith. Courage is equal to all your values and convictions multiplied the faith you have in yourself. The stronger your beliefs, the stronger your courage. The greater your faith, the stronger you courage. Courage is the faith that you will live according to your deepest values in the face of all fears.
Courage = Faith in yourself * Values
How do you strengthen your courage?
Courage is like a muscle for the soul. We use muscles in the physical realm to take action. In the non-physical plane, we use courage. The stronger our courage, the greater the force of our action. We build our courage just as we would develop our muscles.
Think about how you would go about making your muscles stronger. If you can only lift a ten lb weight, how would you build up the strength necessary to lift a 100 lb weight? Common sense, states you cannot jump immediately from 10 lbs to 100 lbs. The best way to accomplish this goal would be to successively increase the weight by small increments until you get to 100 lbs. The smaller the increments, the greater your chance of lifting the weights. These small "successes" build upon each other and eventually, you will have the strength to lift a 100 lb weight.
Many people feel that we learn best from our mistakes. While this may be true, we build courage through our successes. The more success you have, the stronger your faith in yourself and therefore, the stronger your courage. This builds a "success mentality."
Using this principle, build up your courage by taking small steps in the direction of your goal. This is where the idea of "breaking down" your goal comes from. The larger your goal, the more massive the weight you must lift. It may seem like a daunting - almost impossible step. However, break up that goal into smaller "bits" and now the goal looks more manageable. With every successful "step" you take, your courage increases.
The Success Equation
Now we have all the parts necessary for Stage 1 of The Success Equation:
- Goals
- Desires
- Motivation
- Courage
How do all of these components come into play? Think about the law of motion. A body at rest stays at rest, unless acted on by an outside force. For you to start on your goal, requires you to expend a force (energy) that propels you in the right direction. This force is motivation multiplied by courage. Motivation multiplied by courage equals the force of our action towards obtaining our goals. The stronger our motivation and the greater our courage, the more explosive our actions will be. We haven't talked about discipline yet, but disciplined multiplied by the force of our actions equals our ability to successful reach our goals:
- The Success Equation: Successful Goal = Actions * Discipline
- Actions = motivation * courage
- Successful Goal = (Motivation * Courage) * Discipline
- Motivation = Desires * Meaning
- Courage = Faith in yourself * Values
Therefore, Successful Goal = ((Desires*Meaning)(Faith*Values)) * Discipline
Tomorrow, we will look at the second and third stages of The Success Equation. Read the second part, The Success Formula. How to Start and Finish Any Goal. Part 2.
