Time to Celebrate!

I Did the Things!

So, you’ve decided on your goal. You’ve worked out your system to get to that goal. Now how do you know when you’ve done it? It’s not always clear. How do you know how far you’ve got to go? The answer is that you need something to measure.

Having something measurable is extremely important in keeping up motivation and it is shown that the more frequent the monitoring, the greater the chance you achieve your goal (American Psychological Association, 2015). On top of that, if the information is recorded or shared, it increases your chances of achieving your goal again (American Psychological Association, 2015).

When wanting to get a lower split, or loose weight there are centimetres and millimetres that will tell us how close we are to our goals. Make sure you schedule in little rewards when you achieve certain intervals; for example every 5cm closer to your goal you get to celebrate with a cup of your favourite coffee or a sticker on a chart. Just make sure that your rewards are congruent with your goal – celebrating with wine or chocolate is counter productive to achieving fitness goals.

We also must remember to measure our consistency as well as our distance from the goal. The Seinfeld strategy and the Paper clip strategy are excellent ways of tracking this. The Seinfeld strategy comes from Mr Jerry Seinfeld. The man has so many credits to his name including TV shows, comedy routines and movies. He said that the secret to all his good ideas was to write as many ideas as possible. Every time he wrote, he’d put a red cross on his calendar. Soon the calendar would have two or three crosses in a row, and he wouldn’t want to break the chain of crosses. It was never about whether he developed a good idea, as long as he worked on his goal. His system to being successful was to write every day and when he achieved this, he was able to place a satisfying red cross on his calendar.

This will urge you to keep going after you’ve started, remembering again that it’s not about how well you’re doing on that day, it’s that you did it at all. This will keep you motivated through days where you might be feeling mentally defeated or that day just wasn’t a good day to move further in that goal. That happens to everyone. Sometimes it is the day to stick to the pole or push yourself and others it isn’t because of things you can’t control. But just showing up and trying is enough to get that satisfying red cross on your calendar!

The Paper clip strategy involves putting a paper clip into another jar every time you make progress on your goal. When the jar fills up, you can treat yourself. It’s reminiscent of putting your spare coins in a piggy bank to save up for a holiday (also not a bad idea to substitute those paper clips for money). This helps with motivation as you can see how much you’ve done and feel proud, while also begging the jar to fill up quicker. Just make sure no body thinks those paper clips are fair game for actual stationary use.

Rewarding yourself while working on your goals is important to keep up morale. Celebrating your achievements is what makes them achievements. Just like birthdays, promotions and engagements, celebrating your wins both big and small are about celebrating what you can do, and you should be proud of that. Don’t belittle your achievement or compare it to somebody else’s. This is a place you’ve never been before. Maybe a millimetre lower or 6 days in row; you put your mind to it, and you did it. And you are capable of anything, and celebrating the small wins gets you geared up for your next micro-goal.

Go you! #proudpolemum

We have a helpful goal setting package complete with a video and templates you can use to set up your goals; download it here! (It’s free!)

References: 

American Psychological Association Paper link: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000025.pdf

Seinfeld Strategy: https://jamesclear.com/stop-procrastinating-seinfeld-strategy

Paper Clip Strategy: https://jamesclear.com/paper-clips