I’ve been told that in order to be effective, goals must be written. The message was delivered as if writing goal makes them come true. Nothing could be further from the truth. What is needed is commitment. Writing goals is useful to establish clarity, to be specific about your goals in terms of actions and timeframes.
If you are unwilling to write down your goals, you most likely have no commitment to them. It takes discipline to clearly define goals, but it takes even more to commit.
Recently I established a goal to get at least 30 minutes of exercise every day during February. I made this goal after getting absolutely no exercise for the prior two weeks. I didn’t write down this goal because it was simple and very clear in my mind.
I did commit to the goal and having done so I immediately felt obligated to get my exercise. There were many days when I had to force myself, and that it the power of commitment to a goal.
I did well with my goal, but I was not a complete success. I made 15 straight days and then I missed one. But I did not quit on my goal at that point. I re-committed to see how many days I could meet my goal. The modification essentially gave me a new goal, and avoided the problem of quitting at the point of failure.
At the conclusion of February, I had gotten my 30 minutes of exercise on about 20 days. Another 6 days I got about 20 minutes, and there were a few days I got none.
I look back on this and I feel it was a success. I feel better because of the exercise. Now I need to set a new goal.
The first few days of March, I had no goal in place and I did nothing. Once again, this proved to me the power of goal setting.
I’ve been very busy the last few days, but I still could have gotten 20 or 30 minutes of exercise. I didn’t, because I lacked the extra motivation of an established goal.
In order to succeed in business or marketing, it is important to have goals. Without establishing a commitment, it is likely that you will do much less work than you wanted and you will fall short of your objective.
Much more can be accomplished when you focus your effort and commit.
Tags: Fitness, Goal Setting
Today was an excellent day for me in terms of getting better organized with my marketing information. I have a ton of stuff that I want to post, but I’ve put it as a lower priority to my health and my fitness program.
This weekend was sunny and warm and my prime motivation was to get my exercise. I did, both Saturday and Sunday, and that left me feeling a bit worn down.
Even so, I did some marketing related activity to help me build my blog and that will become more evident as I get more and more material posted here.
Tags: marketing resources
The end of the month of February, and my February Fitness Challenge, is rapidly approaching. It’s been a good and bad month. I definitely achieved a higher level of physical activity and created motivation for myself.
Nevertheless, I found many days I was overwhelmed by other commitments, mostly work related, that kept me busy until late into the evening and made exercise a definite challenge.
By setting my fitness goal, which was to get at least 30 minutes of continuous exercise every day during February, I discovered that I want to exercise and feel healthier but that is not always my highest priority. When I set the goal, I thought I could pull it off with complete success because 30 minutes seemed manageable. What I discovered is that I felt the need to get some things done at work and on several occasions I did not get home until after 9 pm.
As a result, many days I did the minimum 30 minutes and some days I got exercise but only 20 minutes. In the last few days I encountered my greatest challenge. I worked quite late three days in a row and did nothing but go to sleep when I got home. Today was the third day and I forced myself to get the exercise.
I will need a new goal once March arrives and I’m still contemplating how to structure it for maximum effectiveness.
Tags: exercise plan, Fitness, Goal Setting, motivation
If you are thinking about starting a blog, the simple solution is Blogger. They have a few templates and you can make a fairly fancy blog without knowing too much. As with everything, a basic understanding goes a long way, but it’s possible to make a decent blog with no previous experience.
I made some Blogger blogs, and kept hearing that I should try WordPress. Finally, I did. I have to admit that WordPress has a lot more to offer, in the form of themes and plugins.
It took me a little time to sort out the different WordPress options. I had some moments where it was almost driving me crazy that I couldn’t figure out what to do next, but I got past it.
Now, I’m fairly familiar with the dashboard and I know how to do most of the things I need to do: post with links and photos, update my categories, utilize the comment spam protection features, and even edit my theme.
Tags: blog, blogger, Blogging, wordpress, wordpress blogging
Maintain a positive attitude
I’ve been a bit depressed for the past week as I made a mistake and bought some stock right before the market dropped 1,000 points. It made me feel stupid.
While I was out getting my 30 minutes of exercise today I decided to take a look at my current situation from a positive point of view and see how it looked.
Without getting into all the details, I was able to come up with about half a dozen things in my life that were going well and should make me feel good. Balanced against the loss of some money, the good clearly outweighed the bad.
I feel it’s all too easy to feel bad, either depressed, sad, or in a bad mood. We have control over how we feel, and it’s important to exert that control and take charge sometimes.
I hope someone will read this and take it to heart, and feel better as a result.
Tags: mental health, mindset, positive attitude
