Sweating the small stuff

This is a post I made for my gym group, but figured it was worth posting. Enjoy!

So I know that a lot of people start thinking about goals this time of year. We look back at what we've done this year, and we look forward to what we want to accomplish next year. This is a super powerful thing to do in life and specifically for our ninja health.

Of course about 1 month from now is when almost all of us start kicking ourselves for "failing" our New Year's resolution. Lots of smart people have written about how to help make "attainable" goals, so I'm not going to spend time waxing on that. What I do want to talk about is Sweating the Small Stuff.

Sweating the Small Stuff has a bad wrap. It is definitely important to let insignificant things roll of our backs, but the phrase can have a really positive connotation. We're Ninjas. We like sweat. When it comes to goals, Sweating the Small stuff is what it's all about.

It's great to set big goals for ourselves. "Lose 40lbs," "Get a promotion," Etc. The problem with these goals is it's easy to kick ourselves when it takes a LONG time. Most of these big goals don't happen overnight. Or sometimes even within a few months. The question is what do we do in the meantime? Someone really smart once said that a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. Of course that first step doesn't take us very close to our goal. By about step 100, we're probably ready to call it quits.

The way to avoid this frustration is to create small goals that build to your larger. Ideally, these aren't even counted in the same way. If you want to lose 30lbs., don't make a goal that says "I want to lose 5lbs" and rinse and repeat. Maybe one of your small goals will be to make sure you hit the gym AT LEAST 18 times this month. You know that this will help you get there. But you also have a very short time period to allow yourself some small celebration for achieving that goal. Allotting yourself smaller goals allows you to have a lot of small victories. It also allows you more room if you slip up. It minimizes the vicious cycle that is so easy for us to fall into by allowing a mistake to assume we've destroyed our goal. It helps keep us from procrastinating. Varying which goals you focus on also helps alleviate boredom while working hard to get what you want.

So remember Ninjas. We all want and deserve big things in our life. Lets Sweat the Small Stuff to help us make sure that we get there. Oh and enjoy my new inspiration below. :)