Oh hi there! I hope that you enjoyed my first blog on Getting Started to what will be a journey and a collaboration of living healthy together!
So after we’ve prepared ourselves to overcome barriers that will inevitably appear along this journey to our healthiest life, we move forward…we’ve begun!
We have made the choice, and although the choice is for a lifetime of healthy, it is so important to set goals along the way. Check points to check in and readjust. We may have a goal that we look forward to today that we may surpass sooner than anticipated or that may curb our direction to set our sites bigger and further than originally thought possible.
It’s important to ask yourself; ‘where do I see me at my healthiest and happiest?’ If you were your best version of you, what does that look like? Is it a distance ran? Is it a promotion? Is it a weight lifted? Is it a body fat percentage attained? Is it a play date with your nephew, daughter, grandson, pet? Is it walking to the grocery store and carrying the bags home? Even going through the day without joint pain. Whatever your vision is, picture it in your mind, get a piece of paper or your smart phone notes and write the answers to these questions down:
-My goal Is –
-How often will I check in with myself –
-How will I feel when I reach this goal –
-When will I achieve this goal –
-How does this goal interpret to happiness to me –
-How will I reward myself for reaching this goal –
-What will my next goal be when this goal is achieved –
Put this down in writing and check in with yourself to keep yourself accountable. Services are out there to provide additional accountability and to attribute to your success rate, but if you don’t want this for yourself first and foremost, the added services will not be worth the added cost.
As human beings I believe we are most motivated by the feeling of accomplishment. By checking in with yourself and setting short term goals for long term success allow us to feel accomplished, driving us to push forward and exposing ourselves slowly to the vulnerability of putting our best feet forward into society.
These goals should always benefit and add to our life and checking in with yourself regularly will help you appreciate the effort you have put in. We can sometimes get started and on a roll, only to have one bad situation derail our entire goal. One bad day will not hinder all of your hard work and staying the course and checking in to see how far you have come since setting your goal helps us to push forward and put things into perspective. In today’s world, everything is quicker and time is the most valuable commodity. Treat your hours worked towards your goal as an investment in your own personal health stock: hours envisioning your healthiest lifestyle, training towards your healthiest lifestyle, grocery shopping and food prepping towards your healthiest lifestyle. This is valuable time and effort and literally selling yourself short will not make you rich in the future.
Think bigger and believe in yourself.
Lastly, but so so so importantly, it is paramount to see a vision past your goal achievement. The point of working towards something is to learn and grow and become the healthiest version of you that you could not even imagine at the start. You must have a direction and an eagerness to move forward. This is where the lifestyle component becomes critical for if you deprive yourself of too much or restrict yourself to a point of breaking to accomplish your short-term goal, long term goals become impossible.
I began competing in the months after opening our first Anytime Fitness club in Regina. I started a blog to follow my journey and to keep myself accountable. I could promise to myself to do it, but letting everyone else know what I was dreaming of pushed me even harder. I had always admired the strong women in the fitness magazines and avidly followed my favorites and their competition placements. I wanted that feeling. Competing satisfied that feeling, but the thought of doing a competition and then just falling back into my normal routine seemed silly. I had checked that goal off, now what? There were a lot of confused moments to follow leaving me wondering, where am I taking this? What do I want to do with this newly achieved success? With an ultimate goal to spread the healthy lifestyle, to motivate others to lead their healthiest lives and to inspire everyone no matter the age, ethnicity, education or experience, I set out to spread the message and to prove that all of us are beautiful at every part of our journey. There have been many little goals along the way and with each achievement my end purpose becomes clearer, stronger and I am more and more confident in relaying this message.
Next I will get into the misconceptions that come along with living your healthiest lifestyle. We will combat road bumps and continue our journey to living our healthiest!! If there is a specific situation or belief you would like me to tackle, please comment!
I am proud of you and excited to continue to grow with you to health and happiness!
xoxo Holly Barker