Wanna stick to your goals this year? Read this…

Posted In: Goals | Me January 2nd, 2013 divider 1 Comment »

The new year is a great way to put your best foot forward. For most people, myself included, some of the changes we make are very hard to keep up once the original burst of energy is gone. I’m hoping I can help with that!

There are a tons of books about change out there. Most of them talk about how you need to want to change (duh!) and gives you some theory behind change management.

I came across this book recently called Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, et al. At first, it looked like another one of those motivational books which gave you some good advice and some cool stories but nothing else.

Instead, this one should you a bit of the science behind building new habits and what you can do to put the odds in your favour. Here are the six principles which really made me realize why some of us fail:

• Personal Motivation: How bad do you want to do it?
• Personal Ability: Are you working on skills which will help you achieve your goal?
• Social Motivation: Do your family and friends encourage you to achieve your goal?
• Social Ability: Do your family and friends provide help, information or resources?
• Structural Motivation: Does your environment encourage you to achieve your goal?
• Structural Ability: Does your environment support the right behaviours?

I will provide some examples in the next post, most related to running so you can have an idea on how to apply this new-found knowledge!

***
I hope folks enjoyed the first run of #31in31. It was chilly for mine (-22) but it turned out to be a wonderful night once you got going…

You can post all of you updates to this page: http://www.ecinc.ca/?p=1425