Raise The Rouf Health Introduction
No matter what your story is, what your life looks like, it’s important to have goals for yourself. Having something to chase gives our life purpose and meaning, drives us to learn more about ourself, and drives self confidence! However, as important as having goals is, it’s essential that every goal meets two key criteria. Let’s dive in!
The Meaning of the Carrot and Stick
With any goal, picture yourself chasing after a carrot, whilst a stick is trailing behind you. You are in the middle.
In this analogy, the carrot represents the incentive, what you gain from reaching this goal, whether something physical or simply the feeling of pride you achieve from the accomplishment.
The stick on the other hand represents accountability, the factors that keep you moving forward towards that carrot. If we stop and give up, the carrot gets away and the stick catches us, leaving us alone with the regrets and the punishments of not pushing on.
How to Apply it to Our Own Goals
So, how can we set ourselves up for success and decrease the likelihood of giving up? No goal you set should be easy to achieve, but we also don’t want to create unrealistic goals for where we are in life right now. That is why when making your goals, it’s important to consider two key factors. 1). Importance and 2). Attainability/Difficulty. Let’s break each one down a bit more:
- Importance: When discussing goal importance, the question is simple: Does this goal, whatever it entails, matter enough to you to keep you showing up everyday? If we have this goal for something that we don’t feel strongly about, it’ll be much easier to lost motivation and give up when things get tough. However, if it matters enough to us, we have that sense of drive that keeps us going, even when times get tough and we may now want to show up.
- Keep in mind, oftentimes, the behavior involved in the goal itself may not be the most desirable thing to do all the time, but the eventual result that we’re chasing after should drive us to show up and stack those little wins every day. Think of weight loss for example. The behaviors required to lose weight aren’t always joyous and desirable, but doing them gets us a tiny bit closer to the body that we want, the end goal!
- Attainability/Difficulty: Think back to Goldilocks. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. The same applies to goals. If a goal is too easy, we achieve it too quickly, without pushing ourselves through discomfort and achieving growth. We achieve it, but don’t really feel much reward. On the other end, a goal that is too large will seem daunting, like an enormous mountain to climb. We want that nice happy medium, something that provides us with a mountain to climb, but also where we can see the little wins adding up on the journey.
- The key is that we need both. Without that sense of importance, the difficulty of the goal is irrelevant. You simply don’t care enough about this thing to carry on. On the other end, having that importance isn’t as effective if you’re setting goals that are too easy or too difficult. That is why a useful strategy can be breaking up a big goal into individual sub-goals. This gives you many individual things to chase along the way to the end result, which can easily be too overwhelming when viewed in isolation!
Closing
Setting goals for yourself is important, but creating them in a way that sets you up to actually achieve them is even more important! When setting your goals, rather than drowning yourself with an entire list of things to chase, pick 2-3 things that really matter to you right now in your life story. Consider these two factors when creating those goals, and you will be set up for success. By no means, will it make that goal easy to achieve, but at least to have the drive towards a goal that feels within reasonable grasp! Feel free to contact me with any additional questions, and share this post when anyone else you think that I could benefit! Go out and find a way to win the day! Become a better you!
