Mind Body Spirit Podcast Ep9 Setting Yourself Up For Success

Setting up unrealistic goals can lead to failure, stress, overwhelm, and anxiety. When working towards a goal, smaller steps make it more realistic to achieve a long-term goal and avoid feeling like you have failed yet again. This podcast will give you ideas on how to break down your goals into more manageable steps.

Transcript

Welcome, I am Kim Shepard and this recording is to support you in setting yourself up for success. As a naturopath I often have patients coming in with specific goals so perhaps they want to create a more mindful routine in the mornings or they're wanting to lose weight or they're wanting to reduce stress or they're wanting to increase their exercise and quite often I'm seeing people are setting too high a goal which then is setting themselves up for failure. So it might mean that they want to they've decided that they want to be able to exercise every day or they want to eat three healthy meals a day they want to get up and they want to meditate and they want to journal and they want to do yoga and they have this huge list of things that they want to do but most of the time people are going to fail when they create too much change too soon. So I always say to people they're more likely to succeed within the long term if they just start off with some smaller steps. So if someone's wanting to increase their exercise rather than deciding that they're going to do half an hour of exercise every day I say why don't we aim for two 30-minute walks a week or perhaps they want to do 10 minutes of yoga in the mornings three times a week and for some people who are really overwhelmed where they're struggling to prepare any meals themselves they're eating out all the time they're skipping meals I break it down to even just one thing a week let's aim for some quality time once a week. So it might be that they decide once a week they're going to have 10 minutes to themselves and they're going to choose to make themselves a cup of tea and they're going to go sit outside in the sun so they can feel the sun on their skin and they can smell that fresh air they can feel a gentle breeze on their skin and they give themselves enough time to finish that cup of tea. As many people I meet don't even have enough time to drink the cup of tea and they're finding that they've got empty cups of tea left all around the house. So setting ourselves up with smaller goals makes it easier to achieve these long-term goals because we're less likely to fail and then I say once that you have created this new routine with implementing that one thing then we can add something else into it. So for some people it might be that they're staying up too late and we might decide okay because they're getting hooked on a TV series let's stop at just one episode and it might be a 30 or 45 minute episode they're not staying up and watching a whole movie for a couple of hours but just one episode and that is their limit or when it comes to with their eating habits it might be that they decide okay we're going to do dessert only two nights a week rather than having chocolate after dinner or ice cream after dinner every night they're going to choose two nights a week when they choose to treat themselves and with some chocolate or ice cream or whatever it is that they want to enjoy because we do have all of these amazing things in life that we want to be able to enjoy but often when we are stressed and we're tired and we're overworked and we're not looking after ourselves we overindulge in these these unhealthy habits and whether that is alcohol or sweet foods or unhealthy processed foods whether it's unhealthy relationships it's about setting some realistic small goals to set yourself up for success. So I'd like you to take a moment to think about what it is that you're wanting to work towards so whether it is to do with your health or your mindfulness your relationships your self-care whatever it is I want you to write down what your goals are and then I want you to break that down into smaller steps so if your goal is that you want to be able to lose 20 kilos in six months I want you to break it down that we're going to start with maybe tweaking one thing within your diet so it might be adding an extra vegetable to your plate or it might be deciding that you're going to make sure that you eat one healthy meal a day rather than aiming for three healthy meals a day if you're struggling to do that. It might be setting up some easier goals for yourselves where rather than preparing a healthy meal it might be about getting some healthy frozen meals that you can just heat up for yourself if you're feeling that you're time poor and you're struggling to make this time for yourself. If it's working towards your career and you're wanting to create time for yourself to study perhaps setting down a realistic amount of time that you can choose to study for so for some of my patients it might be that we decide okay half an hour twice a week they're going to sit down to study or perhaps it might be about decluttering a room and if they choose to study longer than that half an hour or continue to declutter after that half an hour that's just an extra bonus so rather than setting a goal saying two hours every day and then feeling like they've failed because they haven't done it every day if we set some smaller goals and then we end up working or studying beyond that we feel like we've actually achieved our goals and we've made it more realistic for us to not feel like we're failing and ultimately achieve our goals in the long run. So break your goals down and make them feel realistic and achievable if it's about losing weight aim for one kilo a month and then if you end up losing two three or four kilos you feel like you've actually superseded your goals and make it easy and simplify it for yourself and as always if you need any support please get in touch much love to you all bye for now