Success with Goals: The Importance of Viewpoint

As we start winding down the first month of the year, I thought it a good time to take a look at goals, and the difference between the ones we achieve versus those that escape us.  One perennial goal of mine has been to lose weight, eat healthy and stick to an exercise routine.  Now if you were to look at me you would think…poor thing, she failed on that front… but,  not so.

In a lot of ways, goals are what you make of them.  Your viewpoint has almost as much to do with it as actual results.  Did I trim down to a svelte micro-size last year, never eat junk food and passionately workout all the time.  Hell, no.  But on January 1st of this year, I weighed less than I did the year before and felt healthier overall.  I could have made the choice to feel unsuccessful, since I had not attained an ideal goal, or I could celebrate the success I had achieved and restart, building upon the progress I’d already made.

It seems to me that people are far better at being hard on themselves, than treating themselves with a bit of kindness and feeling pride in their achievements.  No matter what your focus may be, whether you have health and weight loss goals, basketball goals, blogging goals, organizational or financial goals… pretty much anything.  Celebrating what you have done right, puts you in the right mindset to stay on a path to progress, rather than allowing negativity to pull you down.

Give yourself a little reward for partial successes, and look at them as stepping stones, instead of failed attempts.  Life in general is seldom an all or nothing experience.  90% of life exists in gray areas, rather than black and white.  It is your choice where you land on that spectrum.