Where's the Beach?

When people decide to come to me for help, as a personal trainer, it's usually because they feel like they need to lose weight. Often that is accompanied by wanting to get stronger, feel healthier, and even be a role model to their children. When you set up a goal for yourself, you need to have ways to measure your progress. How do you monitor that progress then? Generally speaking, people like to focus on numbers. But I believe that we should focus more on our incremental progresses. Not an idea of perfection, but continual progress. Things we forget to pay attention to, but that add up to mean so much more than a number. It's sort of like remembering to focus on those little things, those little moments each and every day that make up our day. I think focusing on progress vs perfection helps too because it's not a linear process. There are always steps forward, back, and sometimes seemingly staying firmly planted. But when you break it down into something looser...

I suppose my promises of more consistent posts, new recipes and workouts fell through. Looking back, it wasn't really that it fell through, I simply wasn't making the blog my priority. My focus shifted, and that's ok. It's important to readjust goals, priorities, expectations from time-to-time rather than just trudging along doing something just for the sake of doing it. But it wasn't just losing focus on the blog, it was losing focus on many things. I said that I wanted to step back so that I could spend more time actually living, enjoying life. But I didn't really even do that. Don't get me wrong, I've been making it a point to enjoy the little things. To focus on being more present, trying to not always be thinking ahead. However, I'm a thinker. I think. A lot. My mind is always going with new ideas. New business ideas. New workouts to try, new recipes to taste, new blog posts and informative articles to write. New ways to promote Where...

When you set up goals for yourself, how do you measure progress? I imagine that it varies depending on the goal. It likely often includes some sort of number, like a dollar amount, a certain weight at the gym, a certain distance for running, etc. As a personal trainer, one thing I've noticed is that clients will set goals that include phrases like, "become healthier," "live a healthier lifestyle," "become healthier for my family." However, they almost all have very specific numbers in their minds that will equal those achievements. Usually it's a specific weight goal. Reaching x pounds on the scale somehow equates to being healthier.  So then it makes sense that, for many people, you measure your progress by stepping on a scale. If the number goes in the direction you want, that's success. If it doesn't, that's failure. But scales lie my friends. And yes, sometimes I have to remind myself of that fact as well. Are you ...