Celebrating Our Goals

This month we have been talking about goal setting here at True Balance Karate — deciding what you’d like to achieve and making a plan to achieve it.

Envisioning achievable goals

We have covered SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Attainable / Agreed upon, Realistic, Timebound / Trackable. These are goals that help us really see what it is that we’re trying to achieve.

We’ve talked about creating a vision in our head of what it would be like to achieve that goal, including all of our five senses.

What are we going to hear? What are we going to see? What are we going to feel physically, as well as emotionally?

We create that whole concept of what it would be like when we achieve our goal.

Overcoming barriers

We’ve also talked about the barriers that can get in the way.

Procrastination is one of them. Pushback is another. Thinking “I don’t want to” or feeling as though you’re not making any progress — those kinds of things are all barriers.

Perfectionism can also be one of those barriers, when you feel like it needs to be perfect. So, you get stuck and then you don’t make progress forward.

We’ve discussed how to overcome those barriers and remain motivated. We do that by going back to that SMART goal, with our agreed upon attainable person.

This helps us stay motivated and holds us accountable by seeing our progress as we’ve tracked it. We’re looking at where we’ve gone and how much progress we’ve already made.

So, when we have those barriers, we can look back at all of what we’ve already accomplished towards our goal to help continue to motivate us forward.

Celebration is important too

The last key to achieving goals is our celebration.

Think back to a previous goal you’ve already accomplished. What did that celebration look like?

Was it a hug from a friend? Was it a dinner? Was it a special cupcake or cookie that you really wanted? Was it high fives?

What was that celebration like from that other goal that you remember?

Now, you’ve achieved your black belt. What is that celebration going to look like? Because we do need to celebrate our accomplishments. We do need to celebrate our goals.

We need to celebrate all of the positive forward motion that we have done to make ourselves better.

Attaining your SMART goals

So, what is your goal? Is it specific? Have you put it out there?

How will you know when that goal has been achieved? How will you know it? What gigantic billboard sign will tell you, “I have achieved my goal”?

Earning black belt is fairly obvious. There’s a black belt tied around your waist. You know you have achieved that goal.

Others may not be as obvious. What is that going to look like for you?

Who’s going to be there when you’ve achieved your goal? Parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers. Who’s going to be there when you achieve it?

And by when? Do you already have an idea? Is it in the spring? Is it a year from now? When is your goal going to be achieved?

Include the celebration

If you’ve imagined yourself achieving this goal — you see what it looks like in your mind’s eye, you’ve dreamed it, you know what it’s going to feel like and taste like and smell like and look like — include the celebration in that because we need to celebrate achieving those goals.

Can you imagine any of those things that are getting in your way, those barriers that we’ve talked about previously?

How are you going to overcome those? Because you can do that. You can overcome those barriers that will get in the way.

Then finally, what does that celebration look like?

And don’t forget to set another goal after that because we’re always trying to make ourselves better.

So, keep setting those goals and we’ll see you on the mat.