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Life is a funny thing. You're plodding along, working diligently towards your goals, and just when you think you can see the light at the end of the tunnel you suddenly realize you're looking the wrong way. Where did you get turned around? Was it in Altoona, or perhaps Hackensack? You don't know really.
What you do know is the ground looks familiar and you're pretty sure those are your footprints in the sand, heading the other way. You begin to realize that life doesn't always have to knock you down to throw you off course. All it takes is a couple of detours, just a few wrong decisions and you begin to get caught up in all the puzzle pieces and lose sight of the big picture.
It's vitally important to remember that once you get on the right track in life you must keep moving or you will eventually get run over. Just moving forward, however, doesn't mean you will be moving in the right direction. You can move in any direction really, but only one way is the right way.
You must carefully map out your course and constantly monitor your progress. This is called goal setting. Take for example, losing weight. You know you want to lose fifty pounds and you can visualize how great you're going to look and feel when the weight is gone. You begin to diet and exercise like a madman and soon you have pulled a muscle and slowed your metabolism down to a crawl by starving yourself.
You stop exercising in order to heal your gimp leg and begin to lose your motivation and start eating "comfort" foods again and three weeks in to that New Year's resolution you can barely walk and you're five pounds heavier than you were before you began.
You thought you were headed in the right direction, you could see the big picture, but just a few steps into the journey that picture fell apart and you were swallowed by the pieces.
Losing weight is not a long term goal. Yes, you can say you want to be fifty pounds lighter but you had better set your sights on being five pounds lighter, then another five pounds and then another.
Doesn't losing five pounds seem like a more reasonable goal? Heck, you could lose five pounds just by walking twenty minutes a day and cutting out that bedtime snack. This isn't too tough you begin to tell yourself.
You make short term goals and then simply map out how to get there. Piece of cake, uhh, I mean piece of low fat granola bar, right? You set yourself on the right track and map out how to get to the next station the next town over. Once there, you buy your ticket to the next station and repeat the process until you have finally reached your destination!
That light at the end of the tunnel is now at the right end and before you know it you are fifty pounds lighter, hooray!
Now, all this isn't to say the journey will be easy so long as you have a map. Anything can happen really, but when you are sidetracked, it's much easier to get yourself back in the saddle and headed the right way again if you have short term reasonable goals.
Any goal you set for yourself should be easily attainable in one month or less. If it's not, rethink it. You have to take into account all the pitfalls along the way and how they can add up over a long journey and begin to discourage you.
Some days you can just be chugging along with out a care in the world, downhill all the way while on other days, it takes all you've got just to keep up with the losers. Life is funny that way, but if you keep in mind that everything happens for a reason and don't take offense to that unexpected detour through Altoona, you will be stronger for the extra distance traveled. You make a quick check of the map, correct your course and since you have never been to Altoona, you buy a couple of T-shirts for the family, see the sights, and then be on your way.
When you set goals, remember, you should never enter a tunnel if you can't see the light at the other end. A long dark tunnel is just that, long and dark. It gets depressing in there and you can get yourself turned around in a hurry. You get desperate and head for the nearest light only to find out that once again, you are at the wrong end of the tunnel and just give up. Please take a shorter tunnel, there are simply too many fat people lying about cluttering up the tracks.
For more from the mind of Myla, please go to, http://www.mylamadson.com
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