We hope you had a wonderful holiday season with your family and friends! After a pleasant break and with the new year coming, now is the perfect time to reflect on 2011 and set yourself some goals for 2012.
At Bia, we’re big into Goals. You have to name it to claim it, track it and celebrate progress. We’re so into goals, we built a goal setting tool just for you!
Here are our five tips on goal setting:
1) Make your goal something real and measurable, for instance successfully completing a certain event or running/biking/swimming a certain distance or split. This helps highlight how far you have come and gives you an actual ‘Yes I’ve done it!’ moment. More vague goals such as ‘I want to become a faster runner’ never give you a finish line to celebrate on.
2) Make your goal something that is important to you, something you would love to achieve and are excited about. This positive emotion will help you ride through the inevitable bad session along the way.
3) Not to easy, not too hard but just right. If your goal is too easy you won’t be motivated to achieve it but if it is too hard it will feel completely out of reach. Set your goal right between these two points so it will be a real challenge but is still something you feel your can just achieve, this will keep you motivated and on your toes.
4) Have and end date! Having an end date it critical You need time long enough to make some good improvements but not so long that you become stale or risk burnout. A period of four to eight months ahead is about right. If you have an important target further away then set yourself one or two sub-goals along the way and get focused on those first.
5) Tell someone else your goal to help commit you to it.
At Bia, we have a great option to share your goal with those on Facebook and Twitter – “cheer me on and hold me accountable”.
