by Kerry Taylor

Welcome back! I hope this finds all of you doing well and still taking strides forward. In Part One we reflected and in Part Two we established the goals we wanted to achieve. The next step is creating a gameplan to get there. Without a gameplan, your success rate drastically decreases. How do we create our gameplan to success?

Stage 1
I identify the goal. Turn it into a S.M.A.R.T goal. S.M.A.R.T stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound.

Specific: I want to buy a house is not specific enough. A better statement would be, I would like to buy a 2 bedroom house in Rumford with a nice backyard and a finished basement. You have just given yourself more direction that way.

Measurable: You need to put something in place to establish that the goal has been achieved. Some are easier than others. For example, stating you want to buy a dog is easy to measure, but if you said I want to make more money, that isn't clear enough. You must state that you want to make $1000 more than you did last year. That is more measurable.

Attainable: Make sure it is something that is truly attainable. It can be challenging but not completely out of your reach. I want make a million dollars is realistic, but if you only made $100,000 last year, the chances of you hitting a million dollars are slim to none.

Relevant: Make sure that the goal is important to you and to you only. You are the one who will be putting in the work to get there. If you are doing it for someone else, it's easy to give up when things get hard.

Time Bound: Have a target start and end date.

Stage 2

Work backwards. When you know what you are shooting for, it's very easy to work your way back to where you stand now. Often, that will also get you excited about achieving the goal because you are going on the journey in your mind, which will, more than likely, give you another nudge forward to get there. To work backwards we need to establish some target for ourselves on our journey. If your goal is to lose 50lbs in 5 months, then that would break down into losing 10lbs per month. In order to lose 10lbs per month, what else needs to happen? Your diet has to change from what it is now, so possibly looking into a nutrition coach is a step along the journey. Exercise 3-5 days per week, again, meeting with a coach to make sure you are doing the appropriate exercises to get you to make the progress you want to see each month. Find a gym or activity that you enjoy. If you enjoy it, the chances of staying with it increase many times over. These are all action items you can and need to take to create your success.

Stage 3

Create a calendar so you can put every step into your schedule. Having a visual roadmap for yourself will make it more realistic and help you to see the steps that you need to take and how long you have to achieve it. Write in every day you need to workout, your meetings with your nutrition coach, the target dates when you should down a certain amount of weight. In this calendar you can also place notes there in memory of the day, you can always look back and see why you are or aren't seeing the progress you want to see to that finish line.

Stage 4

Put it all into action and attack it relentlessly until you get there!

I hope this helps you to take some amazing steps in life. Anything is achievable if you want it bad enough. Just create your gameplan and put it into action. Until next time, continue to live a life one degree above the rest.