In many cases it is not productive continue to evaluate a decision once it’s been made. More harm than good comes from reevaluating big picture decisions like who you married, which car you bought or when you had that child. You made those decisions and took steps to achieve them. Some decisions, though, are still in the process of being achieved. Those can benefit from being re-examined because individual steps can be altered or the goal fine tuned as more information is gained.
In our career decision, we first determine the desired end result (not the result we don’t want) and set a course we believe will end with that result. We continually evaluate and adjust the steps we take with education and practical job experience to best achieve the career goal. The goal is accomplished faster because of the effort put forth to fine tune it, evaluate it, and modify the steps taken to accomplish it. It should be the same with health goals.
Now before you tell me you don’t have any health goals, let’s consider some unspoken ones. Most of us want to live a long, happy life enjoying eating and a participating in a variety of entertaining activities. We see people who are extremely overweight or have serious health problems and know we don’t want that. While we may not have formed positive goals, we have unspoken negative ones we want to avoid. I dare you to think through and set some positive goals relating to your health and the role food plays in them. Knowing where you want to end up will help you decide how to best get there. But don’t stop there, evaluate and modify the steps to achieve them based on their effectiveness.
As an example, let’s say you want something sweet for dessert after a meal in a restaurant. You can order a dessert and in the first 4 bites accomplish that goal. If you re-evaluate and stop eating then, you’ve accomplished one goal and are still on track to accomplish big picture goals you’ve set regarding weight and health. High five to your successes!
Statistics show that written goals are more likely to be accomplished. A fact this quote from Goodness Gracious illustrates perfectly:
In the inspiring book, What They Don’t Teach you at Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack, writes of a Harvard study, “conducted between 1979 and 1989 asking graduates of the MBA program, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?”
“It turned out that only 3 percent of the graduates had written goals and plans. Thirteen percent had goals, but they were not in writing. Fully 84 percent had no specific goals at all, aside from getting out of school and enjoying the summer.
“Ten years later, in 1989, the researchers interviewed the members of that class again. They found that the 13 percent who had goals that were not in writing were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent of students who had no goals at all. But, most surprisingly, they found that the 3 percent of graduates who had clear, written goals when they left Harvard were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent of graduates all together. The only difference between the groups was the clarity of the goals they had for themselves when they graduated.”*
So go ahead (today, right now…)and set one specific goal, write it down, and evaluate and re-evaluate the steps that can take you there. The way to accomplish big health and weight goals is to set small steps and keep tweaking them until you have effective steps to accomplish your goals. Now that you’re ready, and set, and are committed to evaluate, GO!
