Set Yourself Up For Success Via Thompsons Product

Set Yourself Up For Success Via Thompsons Product

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As we talked about last month, the first step to changing your health habits is committing to a clear and emotionally compelling goal. With the destination identified, now its time to work out how youre going to reach it.

Look after the present and the future will look after itself

The idea of reaching a big goal that will change your life for the better can be highly motivating. But by their very nature, these goals usually take a long time to arrive. And lets be honest, its difficult to sustain your focus on a distant goal for a long period of time!

You need a short-term strategy for ensuring you behave in a way that keeps you moving towards your ultimate destination. As Wallabies Coach and Thompsons Brand Ambassador Robbie Deans says, You cant have a long-term outlook without a short-term focus.

Identify specific action steps

Dont set yourself a goal without determining what concrete steps or actions youll need to take in order to reach it.

If the actions required arent immediately obvious to you, try imagining how youll feel when your goal is completed, and youre triumphantly crossing the finish line of that fun run, or standing on the scales thrilled that youve reached your goal weight.

Now, ask that imaginary version of yourself What exactly did you need to do to achieve this?

With that information in hand, formulate a firm plan for the actions youll take to reach your goal. Then take a second look at your plan if it seems hard to stick to, it probably is!

Youre more likely to succeed if your approach is realistic from the outset. For example, if youve never exercised before, dont plan on taking five gym classes a week. Religiously attending two classes a week might be more attainable at the outset of your new exercise regime.

Remember, these are positive changes youre implementing, so you want to feel good about your progress, not guilty about your lack of it!

Switch to autopilot

Your progress towards your ultimate goal is determined by numerous decisions you make along the way. Your game plan needs to revolve around making sure that the decision to take a positive step happens as regularly as possible.

Robbie explains it this way: All journeys start with a step. If we concentrate on taking that step routinely, the destination takes care of itself.

Ideally, you dont want to think about taking those steps at all. For best results, you want to set things up in such a way that choosing the new behaviour youre implementing becomes something you do on autopilot.

Whether youre a Wallaby or an enthusiastic amateur, if youve ever played competitive sport youll have experienced this principle in action before. Your ultimate goal might be to win a tournament, but what will it take to achieve that? One critical step might be to get yourself to rugby training every Tuesday and Thursday night throughout the season.

Once youve committed to the goal of winning the trophy, theres no decision to be made about whether or not youre going to training its a no brainer. Its just what you do.

And whether it involves working through your lunch break so you can leave the office on time, or arranging for someone else to be at home early on those evenings to give the kids their dinner, you set your life up around it to make sure that this routine isnt compromised.

Put supporting structures in place

Think about the structures you could put in place in your life to make it easier to persist with your new habit than stop. They often revolve around time management and having access to healthy foods at just the moment you need them. For example:
Could you commit to meeting a friend at a certain time and location twice a week to go running or walking?
If a box of fresh fruit and vegetables was delivered to the house every week might you be less inclined to phone for a pizza because theres no healthy food in the fridge?
Might your neighbour baby-sit your kids for an hour every Sunday afternoon so you can go to yoga, if you do the same for her on Mondays?

When implementing changes like these, the secret to making them effective is to set them up on an ongoing and unchanging basis. Agree with you walking buddy that youll always meet at the designated time and place and then theres no need to deliberate at all. Like the Wallabies turning up to rugby training, its just what you do.


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Article Originally Published On: http://www.articlesnatch.com


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