Written by Amanda Brandt
I love goals! It can be so fun and energizing to start a new project and to visualize how it will go. On the good days, you’re motivated by how amazing you are. You stand a little taller, flex your biceps, and feel like you’re on top of the world. But not every day is a good day, and it can be demoralizing to get off-track. On a bad day—or after a series of bad days—you might be tempted to drop the goal entirely. Long-term goals can be daunting, and it can be tempting to see them as all-or-nothing endeavors.
Did you get off track? No problem! Give yourself some grace and consider redirecting with the following steps:
1. You’ve made a goal and told your friends and family about it. It’s fun and exciting and easy to talk about. But is that marketable goal your real goal? Maybe your goal for a 5K PR is really, underneath, what meeting that goal represents. To get that PR, maybe you’re adjusting your training, nutrition, and hydration. Maybe you’re adding strength training or yoga to round out all that extra training. From this perspective, the Big Goal is really a series of smaller goals, and those Small Goals are each important on their own. In fact, in many cases, accomplishing one of these Small Goals is more transformative and long-lasting than accomplishing the Big Goal. Identifying your underlying goals can help you appreciate small successes along the way.
2. Once you have a good understanding of those smaller goals, you can make a plan for how to meet them. It’s important to put them in the context of your daily life. Where do they fit best? Big sudden changes can be difficult to sustain. Smaller changes, tagged onto things you’re already doing, give you the greatest chance of success. (Read Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit for some great guidance on building new habits.) Let’s say your Big Goal is to run in every Massachusetts city and town (yay!). Small Goals include planning the logistics of each run (routes, gear, timing). For timing, look at when you have plans to visit an area of the state. If you’re heading out there anyway, consider grabbing a run in that town or surrounding towns either before or after the activity you already have planned. If one of your Small Goals is adding hill workouts, choose a nearby hill or two that are easy to get to and decide which day(s) you are going to run those hills.
3. Reward yourself for each small accomplishment! Maybe this is a social media post that gets you hearts and thumbs up. Maybe it’s a map or a chart you color in. If your goal is to run at least a mile a day, maybe your reward is a dollar in a jar for every mile you run. Visual reminders of what you have accomplished can be very motivating. You decide what small reward is meaningful to you.
4. Remember that much in life is cyclical, and there will be good and bad days, weeks, months, years. Pauses/rests/breaks are fine. As an athlete, you know that strategic rest is important. Just as your body needs some rest from exercise, you might need an occasional rest from your goal. A strategic period of not focusing on your goal (perhaps in favor of activities that you haven’t had as much time for while working toward the goal) can help you come back to it with more energy and drive.
Happy striding!

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