Before we begin the journey to ANY of your goals, you must first keep in mind your ABC’s: Attitude, Balance, and Consistency.

Without a plan goals are just dreams, but without your ABC’s a plan can just be an idea. When it comes to setting goals, humans are really good at trying to do a million things at once, or set too many goals at once that don’t coincide. That’s who we are, we are multi-taskers, we live in busy times, and because of this it is easy to set a goal that might seem reasonable but go into it blindly.

Your ABC’s can help keep you on track, but how? Well let’s break it down.

A: ATTITUDE – this one may seem easy, but sometimes it’s not. Your attitude is what is going to not only determine the path of your goals, but how fast you succeed IF you allow yourself to succeed. Attitude is what separates the willing from doers, the good from the great, the blank page to the finished book. Before you start day one of any journey weather it be a health and fitness goal, a personal wellness goal, a spiritual or emotional journey you need to decide the attitude you are going to have throughout it. Set that attitude and STICK to it. Decide that I am going to be open-minded, happy, risky, self-confident, etc. and stay true to it. Staying true to that attitude will help you in turn be true to yourself, and to your goals

B: BALANCE– balancing both your goals and your methods is a tricky task but an important one. If one day you wake up and decide you want to change multiple things in multiple areas of your life, you might fail if you try to do it all at once. Think of it like a teeter totter- when both sides have equal weight they are in balance, but when one is more full, it outweighs the other.

If you start setting multiple goals at once that means your attention has to shift to those goals, and others areas in your life start to suffer. So you want to start working out more? Okay, less personal time for relaxation, socialization, work. So you want to start eating healthier? Okay, you spend more money on healthy food, start skipping outings with friends to eat at home, or start dieting unhealthily and become nutrient depleted. So you want to find yourself and become more secure emotionally and mentally? Okay, you might have to distance yourself from family, friends, support systems, work, etc.

Now I’m not saying the things you “give up” for any of the above goals are a bad thing at all but can you see how if you have to give up so many things at once that your life could take a complete 180, leaving you in a completely new spot with no road map to go off of?

Just balance out your goals, spread them out if necessary, because once you’re in the habit of goal setting and goal reaching, you will stay in that habit for new habits. Remember it takes 21 days to make something become a habit, so stay balanced until then and then become flexible if needed J

C: CONSISTENCY- Like previously stated, it takes 21 days to make something a habit, so there is step number one in being consistent. When you set goals it means there is something in your life that you want to change, not because you aren’t perfect the way you are (because you are), but because you feel that you can be better. And it’s good to challenge yourself! But by changing something in your life means that you have to do things that you have never done before, don’t like doing, or things that are just hard- and this is where consistency is SO important.

It is easy to tell yourself that you have done your best or that you have given it a go for long enough and give up. But just chant to yourself that you CAN and you WILL. Consistency is all about self talk and personal motivation, no one is going to keep you consistent but YOU. Your goals are a long journey, there is never any short goals, they take time, focus, a little bit of TLC and a lot of ABC’s

Now go do something great!