Achieving Your Goals

• SA Engages

April 20, 2020

Do you ever have trouble staying motivated to reach your goals? If you’re like most people, the answer is probably yes. Every day we are bombarded daily with various productivity, health and fitness, or career “tips and tricks”. Some are better than others, but in general, any new practice you attempt to integrate into your life is only as effective as your ability to sustain it. A key aspect in reaching your goals is finding strategies to sustain behavior changes over the long term. Here are a few principles and key practices I have learned to apply over the years that have helped me stay motivated and on track to meeting the goals in my life.

Types of Motivation

First, we need to talk through what it looks like to be motivated. After all, without this, we will have no drive to stay on track to meeting goals. Motivation is the reason you have for behaving or acting the way you do. Identifying the type of motivation you have for each of your goals is helpful in ensuring you are set up for success. For the purpose of this topic, there are five different types of motivation:

1. Intrinsic Motivation: Someone who has intrinsic motivation will engage in a behavior purely because they love that activity. This is the type of motivation that is the most sustainable and most likely to lead to long term success. It can be helpful to find a path to your goals that you truly enjoy (i.e. if you hate running, don’t let that be your means of exercise; try an activity you enjoy like hiking).
2. Integrated Motivation: This person believes that the activity or choice they engage in is a part of their identity. This type of motivation also often leads to long term success, but can be difficult to manufacture early on.
3. Identified Motivation: Identified motivation is the idea that the behavior will help the individual reach a meaningful goal. This type of motivation can lead to long term success, provided you are able to take note of improvements on a fairly consistent basis.
4. Introjected Motivation: This person only engages in a behavior because they think it is the right or correct thing to do. This type of motivation rarely leads to long term success. If you find yourself in this category, you may find yourself feeling a lot of internal pressure, often feeling guilty for not taking the steps you feel you “should” take.
5. External Motivation: Someone with this type of motivation only engages in a behavior to gain a reward or avoid punishment. This type of motivation rarely leads to long term success. In this category a person usually does not sustain the action or activity once the external motivator is not available. You see this in action after weight loss challenges or competitions.

If your type of motivation isn’t the most likely to lead you to long term success, take heart!

There are many strategies you can use to harness more effective motivation styles. If you have an external motivator that is leading you to action right now, try to take the time to find a behavior you really enjoy in the process to become more intrinsically motivated. If you find yourself using a lot of “should” statements and feeling a lot of internal pressure, try to make a solid list of the reasons why you want to accomplish your goal and why it’s important to you so that you can tap into identified motivation.

Change Starts in the Mind

“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.” -Earl Nightingale

Your mindset is an important factor in your ability to achieve your goals. Self-efficacy is the belief in your own ability to achieve a specific goal. The difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy, is that self-esteem is how you view yourself as a whole, while self-efficacy is very situation specific. For example, you may feel very confident in your ability to succeed at work, while lacking confidence in your ability to maintain a healthy eating plan. How much faith do you have that your dreams will become a reality? Do you say to yourself “I would really love to run a half-marathon, but I just don’t have the discipline” or do you say “I know it will take planning and effort to complete my training plan, and I am fully capable.” What you believe about your ability to achieve the goal says a lot about whether or not you will accomplish it.

Self-efficacy is based on two things: past experiences and self-talk.  There is absolutely nothing you can do about past experiences. Past failures and successes inevitably influence your belief in your ability in the future. However, self-talk is more in your control than you might think.

Self-talk consists of the thoughts, both conscious and subconscious, that every person has regarding about themselves. If you had a print out at the end of the day of all the thoughts you had about yourself, what would it say? If your thoughts about yourself are not a healthy balance of both positive and constructive criticism, you may be inadvertently sabotaging your self-efficacy. Eventually you will begin to believe what you continually say to yourself, so it’s important to make sure you are speaking God’s truth about yourself to yourself.

The first step to controlling your self-talk is to become aware of it. Take a mental note any time you have thoughts about yourself and your ability to achieve a meaningful goal in your life. If the thought is not encouraging, take the time to respond to it in a way that reframes it into a learning experience. For example, if you think “I’m so stupid, I forgot to bring my running clothes to work and now I can’t exercise. I’m never going to get in shape.” Respond to that thought immediately and say “well, that’s a shame that I didn’t bring a change of clothes. Next time I’m going to set a reminder on my phone, but today I’ll do a workout at home.” Change in perspective leads to overall change.

Setting Goals

You may have a general sense of what you want to do, but until you clarify and define your goal, you may have trouble succeeding.  SMART Goal Setting is a method used to do that and contains five essential elements:

1. Specific: Goals should be straightforward and should emphasize what you want to happen. What are you looking to do and accomplish? Use action words such as run, develop, build etc. Ex: Instead of setting a goal to “get in shape”, set a specific goal to be able to run 5 miles in 45 minutes.
2. Measureable: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Choose goals with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur. There are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal. Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set.  Instead of indicating you would like to eat healthier, say you want to eat at least 2 servings of vegetables at dinner or limit eating out to 2x/week.
3. Actionable: A goal needs to be actionable.  You should be the greatest determinate of if you achieve your goal or not. If your goal relies heavily on the actions of others, you may be frustrated by the results.  Ex: Instead of setting a goal to place in a 5k, set a time goal that does not involve how the other runners perform.
4. Realistic: Realistic is not a synonym for “easy.” It simply means “do-able.” A goal should push the skills, knowledge and ability of the people working on it but it shouldn’t break them. The goal needs to be realistic for you and where you are at the moment.  You shouldn’t set a goal to run a 3:30 marathon if you haven’t been exercising, but you also shouldn’t set a goal to do 20 push-ups if you can already do 19.  Your goal should be realistic, but still stretch you.
5. Timely: Set a timeframe for the goal. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target to work towards. If you don’t set a time, the commitment is too vague.  The time must be realistic. If you have a goal to run a half marathon, but you never have any deadline, it’s easy to have the same goal for years.

Create a Plan of Action 

When you identify goals that are most important to you, and create them in the S.M.A.R.T. goal lay out, you can then begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You can develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them.

Now it’s your turn! Motivation, positive self-talk, and even a great goal is meaningless unless it is followed by action.  What will it take to accomplish your S.M.A.R.T goal? Now that you have a strong foundation for your goal, create three manageable tasks that will lead you closer to achieving it. Celebrate your milestones to keep the motivation high and you will be well on your way to achieving the goals that matter the most to you!

Sources

Green, D. J. (2013). ACE Health Coach Manual. American Council on Exercise.

---