Goals

Well, I now have a goal zone for working out. Though I wanted to "work out to maximum," your mind can be joked around a bit. Mind over matter is a curious but true thing indeed. Did 30 pushups last night in a row that felt that was my max. Tonight I did 47. But because I had a goal. Had something I desperately wanted to get to. And that was the "good" level in Navy exercising for someone 21. =P Low, I know, but what I wanted to achieve. But now I have my goals to get to and even do better than:
PERFORMANCE     POINTS  CURL    PUSH      1.5-MILE     SWIM
CATEGORY                UPS     UPS       RUN          500-YD     450-M

"Maximum"       100     105     87        8:30          6:30      6:20
I don't know how I will measure the running or swimming one, nor do I really care about the swimming one, but the pushups and situps are both things I'd love to reach. =D (Check out your fitness here: http://www.navy-prt.com/malestandard/malestandard.html )
But I also have a new workout song that I enjoy the intensity and music for! And the music really kicks off right near the 40 second mark if not earlier, so I can test all my stuff against the 2 minutes you're given to do the workout stuff in the Navy. Gonna be as fit as Alex by the time he's out. ;D
Ok, so enough about me and working out. Now about thoughts, and apparently people care because this place is actually getting views. Never thought there would be. XD Anyways, I wanted to talk this evening about goals.
We all have them, we've all set them on New Years, and we've all totally failed at them. Some we do better at, some we don't. I haven't done the same workout routine twice in all 8 days, nor do I think I'll have the body image I imagine in my head at the end of 8 weeks. But I have kept the goal of at least doing something every evening. I've gone three days in a row of doing at least 2 hours of workwork. Some days it was cleaning the garage, today was getting paid to clean off a roof. I know 2 hours isn't a lot, and I know I can and will do more. But it's something. It's choosing to not let a whole day go to waste. Maybe most of it gets spent swimming, tanning, and hanging with friends. But it's not the whole day. And that's a start. Maybe next week I can bump it up to doing 4 hours or 6 hours of work every day before spending time with friends and whatnot. But at least 2 hours is starting. Half the work of a job is starting the job. The finishing is the easy part.

(Picture personally named: Goal At Journey's End. (c) jayclemo) Something to keep in mind though is how goals work. We all want to feel successful, and we all want whatever the end result is of the goal. But perhaps choosing the end result /as/ the goal is what makes it difficult to impossible to achieve. No matter how long it may take us to reach that end goal, every day we don't, we still feel like we failed. So perhaps instead we should look at doing something every day, or every week. Something small. Rather than "I'm going to lose 10 pounds by the end of July" which gives all the time to "work on it" till the end of July, you instead say "Every day I'm going to eat one vegetable, one fruit, and do one exercise for 10 (or 20 or 30) minutes. Pick and exercise, and just do that one thing for 30 minutes. Then, no matter how much weight you are losing, you are a) continuing to lose weight, and b) able to feel successful at the end of every day because you completed your goal.
If it's smoking, rather than "I'll quit by the end of the year", you choose "I'm going to phone a friend I haven't talked to the next time I feel like smoking something." Now you're rewarding yourself for not smoke, getting to talk to someone, even if it's the same someone (girlfriend, boyfriend, etc), and you feel successful in finding an alternative action to the action habit wants you to make. Any goal you want can be broken down into small manageable pieces if you really want to do it. I've been being successful so far at mine with working out and am in the process of moving that over to the rest of my life one job at a time (Waking up at 8am every morning, taking the trash out every day, cleaning the littlerbox every day, etc). Already there's been improvement in my doing work as I said earlier. What's some goals you've made and kept or achieved? And are you looking for any suggestions on how to meet goals you've been struggling to make so far?
-Jake


Good quote:
"A goal is a projected state of affairs that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve – a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development. Many people endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines. 
A desire or an intention becomes a goal if and only if one activates an action for achieving it."