Effectively Executing Your Goals

Ever get that feeling of now what?  You have completed all the necessary steps and your goals are set.  You know what you want and then...

Now What?

I've received several inquires of late asking for help on pushing through some tough goal execution issues.  The common problem with simple terms often used like "Take Action" is related to how.   The objective for this post is to list a way you can effectively execute on your goals.

I advise my clients to think in terms of Goal Action Planning or GAP for short.  Then work into your life, 5 year, 1 year, Monthly, Weekly then Daily goal setting.  Once that is done you will want to set an action plan.  Here is where it starts to get a bit sticky.  The planning part asks for quite a bit deeper thought process.  Lets kick off cutting this down to smaller parts and start backwards to move forwards.  We will start with the goal you are wanting to achieve for the day.  For an example lets take losing weight as an example since this is a common theme for people these days.

Today I want to loose weight.  Fantastic! (Goal).  Positively speaking,  I like this start.  However, I'm going to take the words WANT TO out of the equation.  Now we have a more definitive goal for the day on our hands and change that to "Today I loose weight".  I feel this is much more assertive goal to the mind and make a self accomplished statement.

Okay, so we have our day's goal now "Today I loose weight".  Ask yourself what action will I take on that goal today?  You might answer, by going to the gym and working-out.  Yeah! Great!..
This is where I'm seeing a lot of hang up, in the execution of planning.  The problem with this general goal is in the specificity.  Your planning leads you to the action you want to take so work to be very clear with yourself.  You will want to work deeper in your action planning just as you did in your goal setting.  So, twist the action "working-out".  Be more assertive with your action here.

Example:

Today I loose weight by going to the gym and working-out "on the treadmill".

See how I did that.  The mind is a wonderful machine.  Sometimes we need to tell it what to do vs. letting it tell us what to do.  Try to always work deeper and more specific.  The more specific you can be with yourself the more clarity will come and see you to accomplishment.

We are not quite done yet with our execution.  We need to dig a little bit deeper to create more clarity for out day's goal.  Now we will add in a time stamp in two ways.  One for the experience of time "on the treadmill" and the other is for the experience of time to leave for the gym.    Sorry, I always treat time as an experience vs. obligation.   That is a topic you can email me on if you want to talk further on that specific subject.  Now, back to the day's goal.  We have added in the experience of TIME.  Our goal now looks something like this.

Example: 

Today I loose weight by going to the gym at 6:30 AM and working out on the treadmill for 30 minutes.

Not too bad.  This is a clear and concise goal for yourself that the mind can grasp and help you accomplish. We now have our day's goal.  Let's go and look at our weeks goal.  Since we already know we need to be clear and definitive with our GAP we can skip the cutting and just lay out the rest of the plan.

Example:  

TODAY I loose weight by going to the gym at 6:30 AM and working out on the treadmill for 30 minutes.

This WEEK I will commit to working-out at the gym for 30 minutes doing _______.  I will leave at 6:30 AM each morning.  (I left out the treadmill, you may want to mix things up).

For this MONTH I will loose 5 lbs and will do this by committing each week to waking up at 5:30 AM so I can leave at 6:30 AM to head to the gym and work-out on the treadmill or some other training for 30 minutes.

This YEAR I will loose 60 lbs and run (4) 5 k races.  I will do this by commit to loosing 5 lbs each MONTH by waking up at 5:30 AM so I can leave at 6:30 AM each morning in order to head to the gym and work-out on the treadmill or some other form of exercise for a minimum of 30 min.

(Now keep in mind I have added in some obstacles we need to make adjustments on.  At some point you will need to lengthen your runs to meet the 5 k training.  30 minutes each day will not be enough and you will want to strengthen your DAY's goals.  I did this on purpose for you.  See if you can go on your own and make your GAP go a little deeper to adjust the 1 year fitness goal).

Your 5 year and life goals can be a little bit loftier.  You may put something down like "In the next 5 years I will be healthy and fit".  For your life goal you might put "My life will be a fit and healthy one.  I will lose weight and eat better.  I will no longer take for granted my physical being and experience my time in a new light.

Concluding this post I hope you see value in how I worked backwards to get to the effectively execution portion of goal setting.  Sometimes we just need a little different perspective or point of view to properly get us moving in the right direction.

Jason Beeding
Coach | Mentor | Author
www.jasonbeeding.com | www.armbaseballtraining.com