Lynne S. Gots, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
Get SMARTer: Set Goals You Can Live With
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 28th, 2011.
While I was driving into work this morning, I heard an ad on the radio for a weight-loss product “guaranteed to help you achieve your New Year’s resolution to lost 20 pounds or more.” It made me cringe.
If you read my last post about setting SMART goals, you may be wondering what’s wrong with resolving to lose a specific amount of weight. After all, a numerical target meets most, if not all, the criteria I talked about: it’s specific, measurable, and timely; and it might even be achievable and realistic, as long as you’re using medically established weight ranges rather than your own ideal of what you’d like to weigh. Even so, it doesn’t pass muster with me.
Call me picky. But I don’t like evaluating success by outcome alone. When you’re focusing only on the end result, you can lose sight of your progress along the way and miss out on valuable opportunities to feel good about the steps you’re taking to chip away at bad habits.
Consider one of my patients, who’d lost thirty pounds in five months. His pants actually fell down in the supermarket when he bent over to pull a box of cereal off a bottom shelf. Yet he persisted in thinking his dramatic weight loss was “no big deal” because he still had twenty more pounds to go.
Rather than measuring your progress by pounds lost, use behavior change as your yardstick instead. Here are just a few examples of SMART goals you could strive for if you want to lose weight:
- Eat fruit instead of ice cream for dessert three times a week.
- Prepare a meatless meal once a week.
- Sit down at the table to eat.
- Plan to eat at regular intervals with three structured meals and one or two snacks.
- Add one serving of vegetables to lunch and dinner.
Did you notice I didn’t use any “don’ts” in my goals? When we’re trying to eliminate counterproductive behaviors, we often create rigid rules for ourselves. The internal wagging finger usually has the unintended effect of propelling us right into a petulant rebellion. Word your goals in terms of positive changes you can make rather than negative behaviors to avoid.
Get the idea? Record your eating habits for a week and use the information you’ve gathered to identify your personal problem areas. Be creative and have fun. The possibilities are endless. And remember, what’s important is the journey, not the destination.
Tags: behavior change, setting goals, weight loss
Posted in Behavior Change, Goals, Motivation, Techniques |
Getting Ready for Change: Finding Your Why
By Lynne Gots, posted on December 5th, 2011.
As I said in my last post, I’m going to help you beat the New Year’s resolution rush by giving you some tips you can use right now on how to create the optimal mindset for change. Why wait? A little readiness goes a long way when you’re trying to build new habits. If you start now, you’ll be way ahead of the game next month.
Losing weight and getting in shape are two of the most popular New Year’s resolutions. Walk into any gym on January 1st, and you’ll find all the bikes in the spin class occupied and the 5-pound dumbbells in short supply. But by Valentine’s Day, you’ll have the place to yourself again when the exercise converts have all gone back to their couches.
If you don’t want to rejoin the ranks of the couch potatoes yourself, you’ll need a plan. More important, before you even think of making a resolution, you should ask yourself how your life would be different if you were to achieve your goal. Too often, we tell ourselves, “I need to [insert target for change here]” without asking ourselves, “Why?”
I just signed on to participate with a few friends in a workout program to motivate me to exercise more. Before starting, I had to set up a “before” profile and determine my goal. Lose weight? Sure, I could shed a few vanity pounds, but since I’m already at a healthy weight and all my clothes fit, this wouldn’t motivate me. Get healthy? Too vague. Tone up? Sounds great, but not compelling enough. Increase energy? Ah, now we’re talking!
Although I already have a modest exercise program in place, my workday routine is very sedentary. I spend an hour and a half or more sitting in my car and ten or eleven hours on top of that sitting in my office. Makes me tired just thinking about it. Yes, increasing my energy is a goal I can really embrace! It touches on so much I value: feeling physically and mentally on top of my game, being clear-headed and creative, having the stamina to get out and do the active pursuits I enjoy. And, better yet, I can get instant results instead of having to wait months to see a difference.
The best “why” will give you an immediate return on your investment. I’m not saying you shouldn’t create long-term goals. But those aren’t usually enough to help you stick to your resolve when short-term pleasures beckon.
It’s much more effective to connect your goals to your values. Being thinner may seem appealing for a lot of reasons, but taking off the 10 or 20 pounds most people want to shed probably won’t change your life. If your weight is so excessive that it currently interferes with your activities or undermines your health, that’s another story.
So you need to figure out what would really drive you. Do you want to feel more confident? More in control of your decisions? Are you sick of being sluggish? How about being able to run around with your kids? Or set a good example for them?
Finding your why isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. There isn’t a universal solution. You have to zero in on what’s truly important to you. Where there’s a why, there’s a way.
Tags: behavior change, goal-setting, motivation
Posted in Behavior Change, Motivation |
Waiting for Motivation
By Lynne Gots, posted on October 10th, 2011.
Whenever people tell me they can’t get started on a project because they’re waiting for motivation, I think of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. In this classic absurdist piece, two characters sit around anticipating the arrival of a guy named Godot. They don’t really know what he looks like and aren’t sure they’d recognize him if he showed up. But they wait for him anyway. They bide their time by telling stories, singing songs, napping, snacking on a carrot, swapping hats, speculating about the merits of hanging themselves from a nearby tree, and wondering if a passerby who stops to chat with them is Godot himself. Nothing happens. The play closes as it begins, with the two men in exactly the same place, thinking Godot will perhaps be coming tomorrow.
Waiting for motivation is a lot like waiting for Godot. We often wait and wait, yet motivation doesn’t come. Or maybe it does, but we don’t recognize it even if it’s standing right in front of us. We fill the hours with meaningless activities or ones meant to take our minds off the waiting—surfing the Internet, checking Facebook, texting friends, playing games online. We grow bored. Occasionally we despair. And still we wait, not stopping to think that perhaps it’s the waiting, and not motivation’s failure to arrive, that’s holding us back.
So the next time you find yourself stuck, unable to go anywhere until the elusive motivation gets there, think about these lines from the play:
“Tomorrow, when I wake up . . . What shall I say of today? That . . . I waited for Godot?”
Stop waiting. Start moving. And maybe you’ll run into motivation along the way. And even if you don’t, at least you’ll be some place different from where you are now.
Tags: motivation
Posted in Behavior Change, Motivation |
