Setting Your Reasonable Goals | Micron Associates: IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR HEALTH

Choose a weight that is appropriate and attainable.

1. See what you want.

Visualization is step No. 1. Sit in a chair and imagine yourself happy five or 10 or 25 years down the road. Be specific. Be clear. One big reason people fail to reach their goals is that those goals were amorphous to begin with. A goal like “buying your first house soon” is too wishy-washy. Deciding that you’d like to buy a three-bedroom Cape on a half-acre within 30 minutes of your workplace before the next school year is much better. There’s no need to be practical about this–think big.

Once you have your vision, focus on how it makes you feel. As the research of Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert has shown, you’re likely very good at identifying the things you believe you want. But when you get them, they often don’t make you as happy as you thought they would.

To become a better forecaster of your own happiness, think about how you’ll feel if you get what you think you want. What kind of emotions will that elicit? How long will they last? Try to imagine as many aspects of the outcome as you can. Even winning the lottery has its hassles–cold calling from brokers, new found dealings with the tax man, tension in families.
2. WRITE YOUR GOALS DOWN.

Like any good idea, goals need to be written down so that you can refer back to them every now and again. You may decide to change them or to abandon them. That’s your prerogative. But they need to be in writing.

Why? Because if you don’t write them down, you’re likely to forget them. When you see something, your brain holds onto that image for about a half-second. When you hear something, you retain it a little longer, say three seconds. Then you lose it, unless you make an effort to retain it, perhaps by repeating it to yourself over and over or creating an association (Mrs. Green has green eyes). To move a bit of information from your short-term memory into your long-term memory, where it can be available for you to recall, you either have to play with it–or go with the easier alternative: Write it down.

3. TURN EACH GOAL INTO AN ACTION PLAN.





Break each goal down into the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it. Say your goal is to save $5,000 in the next year. That may sound daunting–but saving $100 a week for 50 weeks doesn’t.











4. UNDERSTAND THE TIME INVOLVED.

We often overestimate how much we can accomplish in a single day and underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year, given just a little progress every day. That’s true whether you’re teaching a child to swim, writing a book or trying to lose 10 pounds. Quick fixes rarely work. » Setting Your Reasonable Goals | Micron Associates: IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR HEALTH