Sustaining Momentum After You Achieve a New Year’s Goal
Many people are capable of sacrificing in the short term to achieve a goal. However, very few people are capable of sustaining momentum after they achieve their goal. Of course I would like to tell you that I’m part of the few. But the truth is, more often than not I’m part of the many.
One of my biggest challenges has always been sustaining momentum after I achieve a goal. For example, for the New Year my goal is to get back to my “fighting” weight before the spring. I want to lose about 15 pounds. I can guarantee I will achieve this goal because I know exactly what to do, I’ve done it before, and I can do almost anything beneficial to my health for a short time frame. Unfortunately, herein lies the problem.
No matter how much I coach others about focusing on the long term, I still make the mistake of focusing on the short term when it comes to losing weight. Once I hit my short term goal, I lose momentum and I allow bad habits to slowly take over. This is not what success should look like.
This year, I’m going to work harder to take my own advice. In order to sustain momentum the first thing to remember is to focus less on the goal and more on the process. By focusing on the process I can optimize it so it is sustainable instead of extreme. Extreme processes are doomed to fail eventually. This leads into the second thing to remember.
It’s always better to achieve a goal slower with balance over achieving it fast with extreme action. This balance requires patience, rest, recovery, and a focus on the long term over the short term. While sacrifice is important, extreme sacrifices in the short-term without rest and recovery is self-sabotaging in the long term.
Of course I can achieve my New Year’s goal quickly with extreme sacrifice in the short term as I have done many times. However, I know it won’t be worth it when I rubberband back to where I started by the summer. In short, the only way to sustain momentum is to make the momentum sustainable. So as I wrote yesterday in my article about defeating dream killers, the best course of action is to start small and remain committed to consistency over the long term.