I've been thinking a lot lately about short, medium, and long-term motivation. I think when people talk about their weight loss goals, they focus most of their energy thinking about long-term motivation: Be XXX weight, get off blood pressure meds, bead diabetes, wear a size XX, and so on. For some of us, accomplishing those goals are months, if not years, away.
But what about today? And tomorrow? Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on what's motivating me right now? One of my favorite Blogs, DeepExistence.com, had a great quote a few weeks back. I even wrote it on a post-it note and placed it on my moniter:
Ask yourself if what you're doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.
This relates to almost every facet of life, but I'm going to focus on weight loss. So let's break it down:
What do I want tomorrow? To me, this means the long term goals described above. My long term goals are the usual--Fit into a size 6, be 144 lbs or less, etc.
So what am I doing to get me closer to those goals? This is where short term and medium term motivations come in. Each of these is designed to get me closer to where I want to be tomorrow.
My medium term goals are a few days or weeks away. For example, one goal is for me not to go crazy with my eating this weekend. My motivation is that my weigh-in day is Monday!
My short term goals are what I can do today. My goal today was to wake up early before work and take the dogs for a walk. My immediate motivation is that my dogs need exercise and drive me crazy when they don't get it. This action is immediately rewarding with tired dogs but it also gets me closer to where I want to be tomorrow...and where I want to be next year.
What are your short, medium, and long term goals?
And what are your motivations to accomplish them?
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