Today’s Small Change: Use your long- and short-term goals to ensure success. Make Your Goals Work for You The writer Henry Miller said: “In this age, which believes that there is a shortcut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.” Consider this quote as you think about your goals in the Healthy Living With Ellie program. Chances are you’ve tried taking shortcuts before, like going on a crash diet or overdoing it at the gym. And chances are you discovered pretty quickly that those shortcuts don’t work in the long term. But you can take steps in the short term to help yourself achieve your long-term goals — that’s what Ellie’s program is all about. Slowly and surely, you learn to make small changes in your life that you can stick with, and those changes add up until, eventually, you see a big change in your lifestyle. Today, take a moment to review your long-term goals (the reasons you started this program). Then break those goals down into some shorter-term goals you’ll be able to achieve along the way. For example, if there’s a certain amount of weight you’d ultimately like to lose, aim for a smaller, reasonable amount you think you can take off in four weeks, and put your efforts into reaching that first, short-term goal. You can do the same with fitness goals (distance you’d like to walk, speed at which you’d like to run), healthy cooking (dishes you’d like to learn to prepare), or any other aspect of the program. There may be no shortcuts, but soon you’ll see that making small changes in your life is actually the easiest way to achieve big changes.

Thursday August 02, 2012

Healthy Living with Ellie Krieger