Set Small Goals To Get Big Results

Setting goals and starting on a healthy lifestyle change is exciting. You picture yourself having achieved your goal – losing fat, crossing the finish line of that 5K, your doctor congratulating you on getting your cholesterol down, and it feels good.

It’s tempting to want to get there as fast as you can, which is why many people set big goals or try to make huge changes like overhauling their entire diet at once or starting a difficult workout program when they haven’t exercised in years.

When it comes to following through on the things you need to do each day to achieve those big goals, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Those big changes are just too much. The realities of life kick in and things get in the way, and you don’t end up achieving your goals.

Why is that? Why do big goals set you up for failure, and what can you do instead?

How Motivation Works

Most people think of motivation as black or white, something you either have or you don’t. But that’s not at all how motivation works.

Motivation rises and falls continuously. Your motivation at any given moment depends on a whole bunch of factors – how you slept, what you’ve eaten, and also all the events and interactions you’ve had during the day, both large and small.

You can control some of those factors, but a lot of them are outside of your control.

Let’s say you start with a pretty ambitious goal – you decide that you’re going to go for a 45 minute jog each day. If you’re not a runner yet (and even if you are), a 45 minute jog is a lot.

This goal will take a lot of motivation at the beginning.

If we look at our motivation curve over the course of the day, there are some times when you would be up for it (the times when your motivation level is above the goal’s motivation line, filled in with green):

But of course, you can’t just go for a 45 minute jog any time of the day – you have work and other responsibilities.

You’ve planned to do your jog at 6 pm after you get home from work. But you had a stressful day and at 6pm your motivation is too low and you find an excuse to skip your jog.

What if, instead, your goal was just to go for a 5 minute jog? You can handle a 5-minute jog, right? It doesn’t require nearly as much motivation, because it seems easy. You know you can do it.

And if we look at our motivation curve, you have enough motivation for a 5-minute jog pretty much any time throughout the day, including at 6pm when you’ve planned to do it.

Small Goals Help You Be Consistent

Since you have enough motivation to complete a small and easy goal most of the time, you’ll be able to follow through with minimal chance of bailing on your plans.

You’ll start jogging consistently, and consistency is the most important aspect of achieving your overall goals.

When you’re doing something consistently, it’s just a matter of time until you get the results you’re after.

Small Goals Set A Foundation That You Can Build On

Once you’re consistently completing that 5 minute run, you can start to build on it. Maybe the next week you’ll do a 6 minute jog, and then 10 minutes, and then 15, and so on.

As you build up your jogging time, you’re building up your fitness. You’re also building your skills and your self-identity. You become the kind of person who jogs each day.

You also build your confidence. Pretty soon that 45 minute jog doesn’t seem hard anymore, because you know you can do it. At that point it doesn’t require so much motivation, and you’ll be able to achieve it consistently. This is how you get big results.

Sure, this method takes time, but you're much more likely to succeed this way.

This process of breaking down big, overwhelming goals into small achievable ones is called “Shrinking the Change.”

Start Small And Easy by “Shrinking The Change”

Take your daily goal and shrink it until it's so easy, there's nothing that could stop you from being able to achieve it.

Make it even easier than you think you have to. Don’t worry about starting too small, the point is to be consistent first. There will be plenty of opportunities to build on your initial goal later.

Here are some examples to get you started:

Test Your Small Goal

Once you've shrunk your hard goal to an easy one, do a quick self-assessment.

How confident are you, on a scale from 1-10 (with 10 being 100% confident), that you would be able to achieve that goal on any given day, no matter how busy or stressed or tired or "unmotivated" you are.

If you've made the goal simple and easy enough, your confidence level should be an 8 or higher. If your confidence level is below an 8, shrink the change even more.

Think about the goals you’ve set for yourself and shrink them down to something easy and achievable. Trust that if you do that consistently and build it slowly over time, the results will come.

If You Need Help

To learn the most effective way to set goals and create action plans to achieve them, download my FREE Goal-Setting Guide. This eBook includes worksheets that will help you create the right kind of goals and come up with strategies to help you follow through.

For more personalized help, contact me to find out how my personal training programs can provide the accountability and expert knowledge you need to help you get the results you want.