Goal Setting

Setting goals is a really important part of helping you to focus on where you want to go in your life. By creating a road map that you can follow to help you achieve your goal you have a step-by-step process so that you are only taking a bite at a time, instead of trying to do the whole change all at once.

Make sure you set realistic goals, and then you will be more likely to succeed in reaching them. It’s great if these are goals that can easily be used by the whole family.

The key is to make each goal or ‘resolution’ a habit, part of your everyday existence. You will then find that eventually your plans will not be given a second thought and you will be less likely to ‘fail’ in your campaign.

To get started on setting your goals, you need to think about what you want to achieve, it needs to be something that you really want. If this is hard to do, start by writing a list of what is important to you and then set your goals from that.

Set a long-term goal for each of the steps that you are going to take in your journey to health and well-being. This is the end result you want to achieve so be precise in detail and, most importantly write your goals down. Make sure you write your goals in complete detail, so that you can really visualise what you want to achieve.

• Use the Goal Worksheet from the Tool Kit section.
• Break the long-term goal into short-term goals – make them bite sized pieces, and remember that you should only do one of these short-term goals at a time. It takes 21-28 days to make a habit, so after about 30 days you could add in your next short-term goal.
• Apply the SMART rule to all goals.

• Ask yourself “am I ready to make these changes now?” if you are not ready then forming a life habit will be difficult. Instead, look at why you are not ready and make overcoming this your first goal. Think what an achievement that will be!
• Keep track of you progress on your Journal pages – use these from the Tool Kit section.
• Tackle one goal at a time – making your goals easier to achieve.
• Consider your goals in a positive light. So often we think of things that we need to stop doing like eating chocolate or over-spending on the credit card. It is much nicer to think of our new habits as something we can actually start doing to help us achieve our goals. Instead of saying, “I will stop eating so much chocolate”, you could say “I will start to enjoy a chocolate treat only once per week”. You are sure to feel less deprived if you take this approach. Allowing a little leniency will make any life transitions easier.
• Don’t beat yourself up if you miss goals or have a bad day – that’s okay, because tomorrow is another day. Learn from your mistakes but don’t dwell on them. Keep moving forward. Try to keep the feeling of success of reaching your ultimate goal in the back of your mind, to encourage you to continue as you get closer and closer to your goal.
• Get support – do Healthy Steps with your family or a friend – then you can help each other. Write down your goals in a step-by-step plan of action and ask a close friend to help monitor your progress. Changes are more likely to happen if you have a network of support.
• Keeping a food diary is a great way to keep track of how your eating is going – not necessarily for weeks, but for a few days. Try and write down each day what you are eating, it can help to discover what and how much we really eat. Use the food diary in My Tool Kit on www.healthysteps.co.nz.

Be patient – lifestyle changes do not happen in an instant.

Reward yourself – when you have achieved your goal, it is time for a reward. Try to reward yourself with something fun.

Above all don’t give up! You don’t want to be making the same resolutions this time next year.

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