“Peaceful Journey” by Federico Stevanin retrieved from FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Today, I would like to share a few tips on how to get refocused on your goals when you feel like you have lost your momentum. I know it can be very hard when you feel like you have “fallen off the bandwagon” of your personal goals. In this post, I will share a few tips that have helped me get back on track:
1) Re-Evaluate
Take a moment and examine where you truly are in relationship to your goals. This is not a time where you beat yourself up for not being where you want to be or think you “should be.” Rather, this is a time to evaluate where you really are and love yourself no matter what you find. Beating ourselves up gets us nowhere fast. Self defeating thoughts decrease motivation not increase it. However, it is important to honestly asses our current position. They say , “If you don’t know where you are coming from, you can’t know where you are going.”
Another important part of this process is to take a quick look at why you fell off the bandwagon in the first place. What triggered this lapse in focus? It may just be circumstantial (busy work week, family problem, etc), and if so you can readily move on. For me, mine was mostly circumstantial; however, I also needed to allow myself some time to grieve the loss of my grandmother and mix of emotions that came with those circumstances. So often, I force myself to be “busy” when I really just need to take some time to deal with the pain of life. Before moving on, make sure you don’t leave any unfinished business related to what caused you to get off track in the first place. If you don’t deal with it now, it will just derail you in the future.
2) Break down your tasks into small “baby step” goals
After assessing a starting point, it is time to determine a feasible goal and then break it down into small, manageable steps. For example, my goal is to lose the four pounds I put on last month. In my old way of handling things, I would have done a complete overhaul and tired to make way too many changes at once. I would tell myself I must exercise thirty minutes every day this week, and eat only healthy food. The reality is you can’t go from doing nothing to doing everything all at once. I have had to learn how to set manageable goals for myself. My goals this week are to exercise three times, watch my portions, drink more water, and eat slower. These should be manageable steps for me. Another benefit to small goals is that you gain momentum as you achieve each one.
3) Just do it
I know this is kind of a lame tip, but it works. If you can force yourself to just work on one small goal (walking for ten minutes today, cleaning one room, etc), it really will get your momentum going. I have mentioned the “snowball effect” before, but it is worth repeating. As with so many other things in life, if you can just get the ball rolling, you will see progress which will in itself motivate you to keep going.
Originally posted March 2011