Micro goals led to massive changes!

You can put as much fancy gear on as you want, but if you don’t condition your inner athlete, hitting that touchdown in life is going to be harder than it looks.

I see so many people trying the next best thing, latest gimmick or self-help technique as opposed to actually helping themselves. I wouldn’t dare stand in front of a room of people trying to help them reach their best if I wasn’t the best version of me presenting it, saying it or living it. I also wouldn’t stand there and tell you I’m living life in abundance and not actually share what I feel was instrumental in getting me there……this drives me insane when I see influencers in the inspirational field do this back end sell or never actually give up the “secret”.

So, what’s the secret sauce? Well everyone will offer a different formula to you and that’s the amazing gift diversity of this world has to offer. Those that are avid followers of Kerwin Rae may not be a fan of Gary Vee both very successful at what they do, both advocates and evangelists of the ‘help yourself’ genre and let me tell you their dialogue and delivery method are drastically different – but I take something from their teachings every time. So, half of what I’m about to say will depend on my delivery to you and the other half will depend on if it works for you.

Personally, I learn something from everyone that is putting themselves out there, sometimes a little sometimes a lot. My reception to the ‘message’ or the one I seek depends on how much my ass needs motivating that day. Following that thought and to back up my bold opening statements above - I’ve learned to build my life (that I’m living now) by taking small pieces of a daily program that peers and mentors alike have shared with me along the way and I implemented those teachings by using micro goals.

So, we’ve all heard of vision boards and setting life goals IE that house, car, job or vacation to Paris we want to envision ourselves accomplishing by working towards it. I support this and suggest at some point you learn about it and do it, but that’s not what I am talking about here today.

Micro goals are small and easy obtainable goals you set and achieve them in a short-targeted period of time, once you hit it you keep it and then build on it. You are mentally setting yourself up for success and internally it will give you sense of momentum, I will explain in-depth as you read on. If you are anything like me human nature kept getting in the way by wanting instant success, my character defect of instant gratification kept emerging and failure always followed shortly behind it. Examples of this were joining the gym with a new muscle shirt today wanting huge muscles tomorrow or business registration today expecting a million dollars tomorrow….let me tell you my bank account was as impressive as my bench press. I didn’t know how to earn my stripes.

Then I noticed people who I wanted to surround myself with and were winning at life all had common characteristics. Aside from being influencers in their field, successful at business and genuinely seemed happy they have what I call a life program. It is a regiment that they follow, things that keep the mind, body and spirit in peak performance but also kept them mentally and physically prepared for life.

So with suggestion and guidance here is the exercise that I followed. Bear with me, after this list below I am going to explain how the micro goals will apply:

1)     On Sundays take a daily agenda and plan out your personal goals for that week, integrate them with the meetings and tasks you need to complete at work. – here you are mentally preparing yourself for the week, you are mentally getting ready for this week’s natural challenges.

2)     Schedule in three full workouts for the week. I use the Monday, Wednesday, Friday approach so my body can rest on the off days.

3)     Get a full night’s rest, especially nights after your workouts (our body builds muscle and repairs itself during REM sleep). Listen to your body.

4)     Drink a ton of water! Buy one of those refillable water containers…. this is my new coffee and was the hardest discipline to implement for me.

5)     Read. Take an hour a day to read, your brain needs exercise too. There is also something fun about going to a used book store and buying a book. The guy with the dishevelled hair and fuzzy sweater will know exactly what to suggest if you explain what kind of reading material you enjoy.

6)     Do something creative. Paint, write or take a cooking class, there must be something you are passionate about! I am cut from a musical cloth so I play my guitar and write music, this works as a form of mediation for me because I can only focus on my what my hands are doing when I play everything else in my brain gets put on pause while playing.

7)     Meal plan your week. Take the time to plan out breakfast, lunch and dinner (and if you are like me lots of snacks in-between meals). This will also help drive your grocery list, I find grocery shopping a lot easier, when I have what I need listed when I walk in the store there is far less junk food in the cupboards! Parents who are reading this know exactly what I mean here and I’m probably preaching to the choir!

This took me a long time to piece together and build but also learn to stick to it, I’m not going to paint a perfect picture for you because I am a single father of teenagers, and I am also drug addict in recovery so parenting events and my 12 step meetings are built into my week and these are non-negotiable I must do these first always. If I don’t have my sobriety I lose everything else, and if I don’t lead by example and follow through for my children then I haven’t done my part for them or my legacy.

So seems like a tall order, and starting from scratch could even be overwhelming to some. I also want to point out these seven disciplines are just my suggestions and what worked for me, the fun part for you is building and creating your own or just running with these.

Now I finally get to tell you how to apply micro goals to a regiment or life program.

Look at the list above and tackle what you feel are the easiest for you to adopt. Already doing some of them? Then you’re doing better than I was at the beginning of this! The first disciplines I tackled were the Sunday night planning, and start drinking more water. – I had to nearly force myself to drink water over coffee. I could drag my ass down to a Starbucks in a snow storm but didn’t know how to walk 15ft from my desk to the water cooler….take it from me bad habits die hard! As for the creative discipline, that one was easy because I still feel I am an undiscovered rock star.

The weekly Sunday planning was huge for me. It took most of the surprises out of the week for me and also helped me see my overlap days where I had schedule conflicts and could address those days in advance as opposed to looking like I was flying by the seat of my pants the day of.

Next is the psychological effect of smashing through the micro goals because they were simple:

1)     Find a book store.

2)     Buy a new book.

3)     Start reading my book on commute into my office and/or on way home.

4)     Pick a gym close to me.

5)     Get a membership.

6)     Book a few sessions with trainer at the gym (I did this so I could familiarize myself with new gym and get confidence going every other day, and also helped me see where my limits were and fix my horrible Hercules technique).

7)     Make an excel spreadsheet for my meal plan (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner format)…..stick it on the fridge! Yours truly here learned that one the hard way. If you do this and put proper balance of fuel in your system you will notice the difference!

8)     Print out a shopping list that supports your meal plan. You will notice a better variety of food in the fridge and I’ve found this actually cheaper than buying random food I don't need.

9)     Set an alarm to prepare for next day…..the alarm now has a trigger effect on me and knows it's going to bed soon.

10)  Put sticky note on computer to drink water.

11)  Take vitamins in morning. Yes, I got this basic with it until it became second nature.

As I started to check these simple items off my list I felt a sense of accomplishment seeing them listed and scratched out. But I was also putting things in place that I so desperately needed which was structure, regiment and balance. Finding the book store and gym were like small adventures but so simple, also things I had been meaning to do for a long time. When they were written down as a to-do it was more a mental contract with myself to get things done.

But the real benefits of this hit home with my kids, my work and my creative projects. Because I slowly built these disciplines using micro goals I felt more positive and happy as they fell into place, since these are also focussed on improving your mind and body I physically started to feel more energetic, my bandwidth for taking on more projects was amazing. I finally started to feel balance in my life.

Sure my list has changed to items like a gratitude list in the morning, new circuit training at the gym, write this article you are reading….. I am finally building on my first set of goals, I finally feel I stopped sucking at life.

Ryan Kerr