Announce your goals.

Whether you are a runner, an athlete, a gym goer, or a walker, setting goals is a positive thing to do. It allows you to train/exercise with direction, preventing you from feeling demotivated and unsure of where you are heading. It also allows you to witness your progress, and see how far you have actually come. 

Setting goals is quite a simple concept that gives you direction and focus, however, I find the most beneficial part of goal setting is opening up about them. There is no reason as to why we should be shy about our goals, therefore we should feel happy to speak about them. Keeping them to yourself doesn’t help you feel any more confident about achieving them, in fact I find it makes me feel less confident that they will happen. I found this year a key example of this. I was always very shy about my goals and always kept them to myself. However, the last year I made myself announce them and reveal them to others, and I found as a result I felt more accountable to achieving them. I find myself striving for them with more determination and drive because I had explicitly stated what I was trying to achieve. 

Whatever your goal may be, own it and open up about it. So, why is this?

Opening up about your goals and speaking about them allows you to take them more seriously. If you feel able to talk to people about them, it allows you to realistically see yourself achieving them. This allows you to feel committed to achieving them as you want to prove yourself right. Once you announce them, there is that human desire to follow up on your words. Therefore you see them in a more serious, determined light, and are less likely to back down from achieving them. 

I also find, the more you say something, the more you believe it. It may be that the goals you have set yourself scare you. There is no shame in this. In fact, I think the scarier the goal seems, the better it is, because your goals should push you. The more you talk about them in a relaxed and open setting, the more you convince yourself they are possible. No goal is out of your reach, therefore talking about it as though it is your reality allows you to believe you can achieve it. 

Therefore, next time you contemplate keeping your goals to yourself, shout about them, because once you do, you will see they feel a lot more possible.