UPDATED 1/8/2020:

One of my Facebook friends shared a cool article she got inspiration from on Entrepreur.com.  The article was by James Clear and it’s no longer at the link I originally had so I had to remove the link.  It was called “Forget Setting Goals.  Focus on This Instead”.   Well, the “this” in the article was systems, that is, the article talked about how the systems you use to achieve your goals are a better focus than the goals themselves.

The article even mentioned the frustration of achieving weight loss goals and we can all say “amen” to that, right?  Basically, I found the article to be of interest because it reinforces some of the ideas I put forth in my e-book, Lose Weight the Lazy Way: 25 Golden Rules to Success, which you can check out more about here: http://lazygirlz.net/e-book/.

Fortunately, a trainer contacted me with another interesting link and article about goals:

https://dumbbellsreview.com/forget-setting-goals-focus-on-this-instead/

I spend quite a bit of time in the e-book talking about how to set your goals so that they are truly motivational and so that they don’t set you up for failure.  For example, saying “I want to lose five pounds in 30 days” sets you up for failure.  As a goal, it just doesn’t cut it on several levels.  I mean, who can live up to such an arbitrary, unpleasant goal?   No, the essence of goal-setting is to make it general enough yet emotionally resonant so that you actually have a shot of obtaining these goals. 

One of the examples of motivational techniques I used in my e-book was “I want to look nice in a dress for my best friend’s wedding coming up in three months”.   Do you see that I did not tie this motivational goal to a specific number of pounds?  All that would have done is to stress me out, and that’s no way for anyone to lose weight.  As it was, I did lose about five pounds in those 3 months and I did feel confident enough to wear a dress and feel good about the way I looked in a dress at the wedding, so it was all a win/win for me, I’m happy to say.

Now, once these primary, over-arching, motivational goals are set, I like to focus on the system to get there, and that’s what the sub-title of the e-book suggests: “25 Golden Rules to Success”.  The Rules are the system, period.  By keeping my mind on the new eating habits I’ve developed and by just living my life as I go, and by not constantly measuring my weight-loss progress along some strict or too-specific goals, I can live in a state of forward progress.  In short, I can live in a state of success, and I can lose weight…without stress.  So can you.

As Obi Wan Kenobi said to Luke in “Star Wars”, “trust in the Force”.  In our case, it means trust in the force…of habit!  Good habit, that is! Just keep it up and trust that sooner or later, you will prevail and you will meet your goals…stress-free.