Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Goal Setting or Small Steps, Big Goals

I love this picture. I don't know if you can tell, but each of those containers holds giant amount of Legos with the tag line What Will You Make? When I saw this, I knew I had to use it for this post. You see, today I'm going to tell you why I chose 1,000 steps as my first goal towards walking my way into a healthier life.

Y'all know what Legos are, right? They're these tiny building blocks that you can hook all together to make some seriously awesome creations. At the bottom of this post, I'm going to show you just a few of the things people have made. Seriously, I almost didn't get to this post because I was so buy geeking out over Lego creations.

Here's where the simile/metaphor/other geeky english language term comes in. Like Legos, you can change and build a healthier you, one building block/one step at a time. You've heard me say babysteps probably a million times now and it's a practice and theory that I totally subscribe to and believe in. We all want to be super human. We all want to do it now but let's face it, that's just not realistic for most of us.

Let's take walking for our example. I know there are people out there who walk 10,000 or more steps a day on average and that's awesome for them. As for me, if I tried that I'd never get off the couch. The very number would overwhelm me to the point where I'd get nothing done. So, I wore my pedometer for a few days and then averaged out what I get in a normal day. Are you ready for this? On an average day, I was only getting in about 500 steps. Ouch! That's not good and I think we all know that. I needed to make a change but one that was achievable.

Here is the major important point to this. Our goals need to be achievable. Yes, they need to challenge us or they're not really a goal. However, if we do not make them achievable, we won't reach them and where will we be? Right back on the couch with our favorite tub of icecream while watch Biggest Loser and say why can't that be me? Why can't I do that? Hello! Those people have nothing to do but workout! We have lives, kids, jobs and more.

Make your goals achievable. For me, I looked at my average and said I can do better than that. I can do 1000 steps a day. Once I get 1000 every day for a few days, I'll up it to 2000. Know what? I had a cheering squad behind me last night and I got to over 2000. It felt amazing! Today, I have a step partner and we've challenged ourselves to do 2000 again. Once we're regularly hitting that goal, that number will go up.

My advice is simple. Perhaps so simple that you're going to read this and go duh, we all knew that! It doesn't matter what goal you're trying to reach, take it slow and break it down. Are you not reaching your daily water goal? Take a look at what you're getting on average and then increase it by 8oz. That's one small glass of water. Keep increasing it slowly and seriously, before you know it, you'll be right up with those folks getting in 100oz a day.

I know some people who have had some real reality checks in their lives lately. They want to rebuild themselves, inside and out. My advice to them has been the same. Take it one step, one piece at a time. You didn't become this person overnight and you won't change overnight. You can babystep your way to being a better person. Someone once asked me how I'd eat an elephant..the correct answer? Umm..I wouldn't ewww...the answer they wanted? One bite at a time.

So, like these folks built these amazing Lego structures one brick at a time, let's change our lives one small, healthy goal at a time.







1 comments:

Pipi

I'm so happy that we are doing this step goal together. Thank you for writing this post. It helps me keep myself in check and realistic.
On the lego note, I had the opportunity to take my daughter to see lego exhibits at our local museum. Very cool sculptures from a pencil to a stop light and loads of faces and hands. There was even a womb. When talking to one of the museum's employees, they said the sculptures were worth $30,000 a piece. I made a joke on fb and twitter that I needed to buy legos and get building. lol

Welcoming Weight Loss   © 2008. Template Recipes by Emporium Digital

TOP