The Art of Goal Setting

The most important task when setting up your goals for any part of your life is to write them down on paper. Somehow writing them down takes them out of the someday thought process, and helps you to put a plan into action.

Once you've set at least one long-term goal for yourself, you need to think about how you are going to accomplish it. What smaller, short-term goals are going to get you there? Once you have those small goals, list one to three actions you can take to reach each one. For example, if your long-term goal is to lower your cholesterol, then two short term goals could be to watch your saturated fat intake, and exercise more. Your action steps for watching your saturated fat intake could be to determine a daily limit, learn to pay attention to the saturate fat levels in food and track it as well as find new recipes for old favorites that cut down on those unhealthy fats. As for your action steps for exercising more, you could start with scheduling time throughout the week that you have an appointment to exercise like going on a walk or getting in some strength training.

Don't be afraid to challenge yourself to find substitutions for habits you want to break, and create a working plan to break them. As you check off those short-term goals, you'll feel more accomplished than waiting to see the final outcome of that long-term goal.

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