If you feel like your attempts to make health changes in your life keep falling short, you are not alone. Making long term habits can be really hard. As a Brain Health Coach, I have learned about ways you can form goals that stick versus creating goals that never lead to anywhere.

Tangible Goals

Let’s talk about the ways we set goals. Most of us set goals in a very tangible way. For example, “I’m going to lose 15 pounds”, or ” I’m going to exercise more,” or ” I’m going to get that new promotion.” Setting tangible goals can be very effective. It’s also a very logical and logistical way of creating goals.

However, today I want to talk about creating goals that tie in with an emotion.

Setting Goals with Emotion

There is a way to set goals that can be obtainable here and now!

Typically when we set goals there is a waiting period. For example,”when I lose 15 pounds, it’s going to be better,” or “when I start exercising more and finally get to my goal weight,” or “when I get that promotion in 1 year, life will finally be better.”

To start setting goals that are obtainable here and now, I want you to look at why you set goals. This step is often missed! We get caught up in thinking about the thing that we want to obtain like weight loss, or that new job!

But if you ask yourself, “why do you want to lose 15 pounds?” What’s the emotional part of it? How do you want to feel when you lose those 15 pounds? Perhaps you want to feel more confident, proud, or a sense of freedom. Attaching those feelings to your goals brings pretty amazing outcomes that happen instantly.

Lets Take Action

Lets start setting goals based on an emotion, not a tangible thing.

Instead of waiting 3 – 6 weeks before we lose those 15 pounds –  we can actually start feeling the emotion here and now.

Let’s say you choose being “proud” as your new goal. When you have “proud” as  your new goal versus losing 15 pounds – you can hone in on that feeling. For example, when faced with the decision of eating a healthy chicken salad for dinner or choosing to splurge and have pizza. What do you choose?

You can ask yourself…

1. What is going to make me feel more proud?
2. Which is going to align me more with my goal?

The answer is probably going to be eating the chicken salad. And Wa La! You’ve accomplished your goal! You chose the chicken salad and you are NOW feeling proud. You are starting to feel your goal here and now in the moment.

This is a big shift in mindset. Connecting your goals with a feeling allows us to start continuing to choose that emotion over and over which is ultimately why we set the goal in the first place.

You can do this with anything. Start feeling your goals. Start choosing the emotion you want to have and then begin aligning with that in life.

You’ll start seeing those results sooner and you’re going to feel accomplished because you’re going to start feeling results sooner than later.

In health,
Lisa Marini