When starting this blog, I had the goal of going to the gym. However, like many post New Years gym goers, I did not achieve my goal and stopped going to the gym before February. In my first blog post, I reflected on my failed goal and described where I felt I had gone wrong. Now, several weeks later, I am well on my way toward my goal of going to the gym six days a week.
The most impactful piece I took away from this search for how to better attain my own goals was the search it self. Each week, I was analyzing someone's goal that they had set and reflecting on what led them to success or what led them to failure. This became a habit and now I take time to reflect on my week and see what worked and what did not work, so that I could improve myself the next week. This changed my whole mindset from feeling like a failure week after week for not keeping up with my goals to recognizing little successes but still continually improving. My advice for anyone trying to reach a goal is to take time each week or every other week to reflect on your experience.
The next piece of advice I learned through the process of speaking with many individuals and reflecting on how they succeeded in their goals is to have a solid plan. When I started going to the gym after New Years, I had absolutely no plan in hindsight. Just simply going to the gym is not a plan, especially for the average person who rarely, if ever, goes to the gym. I end up going in doing some bicep curls because it looks like some muscular people are doing those and biceps are important. Then you move over to the bench press because anyone who is anyone in the gym uses that. So you put on the weights and start repping, but you don't have a spotter and who knows how many you should be doing so you stop when you feel like you can't do any more. Then maybe you move to abs section because it's a nice place to rest and not look like a complete newbie. This is how my gym experience went only slightly exaggerated. All in all, I had no plan, I saw no progress, and I ultimately did not achieve my goal... at first.
Learning my failures and others' too, I have now been working out six days a week for the past three weeks. I have a workout plan I am following that keeps me grounded and on track. I reflect on my week to see where I can improve and what I did well, whether it is that I did not work hard enough on leg day or that I missed a workout. The hindsight that I have learned from each person that I have talked to throughout the semester has aided me in understanding how to achieve my own goals and I hope it can do the same for all of you.
