Setting Goals, Part 1

Training Your Brain for Success
There is a lot of information out there about setting goals. As with
anything else associated with improving fitness, you will need to
select the method of goal-setting that suits you best. My favorite
method and one that I firmly believe to make the most sense, is
promoted by personal trainer, Tom Venuto in his book "The Body Fat
Solution." For more information about this book and other information
from Tom Venuto, visit: http://www.tomvenuto.com/.
The key factor in achieving the goals we set, is to believe that we
can, and the key to believing that we can, is to set this message of
achievement into our subconscious. There is a tremendous amount of
research about the role of our subconscious and its impact on our
daily activity, and experts agree that over 90% (and that's a very
conservative number as most experts actually say 95%), of our daily
activity is driven by our subconscious. In addition to the things we
almost never think about such as breathing, blood circulation,
digestion, etc., many of the things we learn to do such as driving,
walking, eating, sports, cooking, cleaning, work routines, etc. also
become mostly driven by our subconscious. Though we are usually aware
of the activity and even direct it with conscious thought, a lot of
the triggers start up prior to consciously deciding to do so. When
the phone rings, we don't stop to think that we need to pick up the
phone, press a button, place the phone just so to be able to both hear
and talk and say hello. We just do it. Our conscious mind engages
long enough to determine who is calling and to determine appropriate
responses, but most of the actions involved in using a phone are not
conscious activities. This becomes very apparent when you get a new
phone and have to make yourself think about using it until it, too,
becomes something you can do without conscious thought.
So if we accept that most of what we do is triggered by our
subconscious, including eating and exercising, then the trick is to
train our subconscious mind to give us the triggers needed to make
smart choices. To do this, we need to understand that our
subconscious mind responds best to positive statements (i.e., "Do
this," as opposed to "Don't do that.") Again, this is hardly cutting
edge information. How long ago was the popular book "The Power of
Positive Thinking" topping the best-seller list? A more recent
article on this topic that I found to be a good refresher is
"Motivating Yourself in Three Simple Steps Using the Law of
Attraction" by Steve Jones and Frank Mangano:
http://www.tomvenuto.com/articles/motivation_and_the_law_of_attraction.shtml
This is all a rather elaborate introduction to setting goals for
fitness and nutrition, but a necessary introduction in my mind. When
we set our goals, it is important to frame them as positive statements
of accomplishment. If we want our subconscious to trigger the actions
that will help us achieve our goals, then we must frame statements
that our subconscious can use. Instead of saying "I will lose 10
pounds" or "I won't eat dessert" or "I will make myself exercise
today," we should say, "I achieve my goals one pound at a time,:" or
"I make smart choices about what I eat," or I get to exercise today."
These are statements that our subconscious can understand and use to
trigger activity. Telling it to lose something or not do something
doesn't quite compute. Also stating our goals as though we have
already achieved them gives us a powerful visualization of the
behavior we want to exhibit and makes it more likely that we will do
it. When the underlying thought is "I make smart choices about what I
eat," then it is so much easier to choose fruit to go with your
sandwich at lunch instead of fries or chips. And when the underlying
thought is "I get to exercise today," then you go do it with energy
instead of dragging against the more negative thought of "I have to"
or "I really should exercise today." "I get to" means that it is
something you want to do and are excited about doing, whereas "I have
to" or I really should" means that you would rather not and it's a
real chore that you have to make yourself accomplish. The power of
these underlying messages is tremendous and harnessing that power to
affect positive change in our lives will set us on the road to fitness
through better nutrition and exercise.