A Different Approach to Goal Setting
Anyone who knows anything about football knows about the halftime huddle: The team takes a breather and gathers around the coach.
Together they review the first half of the game– what went well? What didn’t? What did they learn about their opponent?
Next, they use that knowledge to make a game plan strategy for the second half of the game. They use the patterns they’ve noticed in the movements of their opponents to figure out a way to better block the offensive line, and they find ways to plug holes in their own defense.
If football teams just spent that twelve minutes guzzling power drinks and wiping their sweaty faces, hoping that the rest of the game would go well, how well do you think the second half of the game would go?
Your Halftime Huddle
You might not be on a football team, but you can still have your own “halftime huddle” (minus the smelly locker room) to see how well you’re doing on your personal goals. In fact, studies have shown that the more often you review your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them.
Here are a few tips for having your own halftime huddle.
Who to Include in Your Huddle
If you have accountability partners, you’ll have someone to huddle with. If you don’t, now might be a great time to find some! But if you’d rather work on your own, you can do it alone and consider it an inner huddle.
When to Have Your Huddle
The nice thing about your huddle is that you can have it whenever you want.
Some people take a few minutes at the end of each day to jot down a few notes about what went well and what didn’t. Others might do a weekly review or a monthly review, then have a more thorough check-up halfway through the calendar year.
When you do your huddle is up to you, but it’s a good idea to schedule huddles at regular intervals to keep yourself accountable.
5 Questions to Ask in Your Huddle
Here are 5 questions to ask yourself when you huddle up:
- Have you “gained yardage” on your goals? Are you closer to your goal now than you were before you started?
- Are you happy with your rate of progress, or do you think you can do better?
- If you’re not where you hoped to be by now, what’s been getting in your way?
- Can you remove the obstacles that are preventing you from progressing? How?
- If you can’t remove the obstacles, can you adjust your goals in a way that you can still make progress without getting discouraged?
3 More Things to Do in Your Huddle: Celebrate, Adjust, and Make a Plan
Celebrate
The first thing for you to do in your huddle after you’ve asked yourself these questions is to celebrate ANY victories. If nothing else, the very fact that you’re having a huddle to evaluate your progress is a victory, so celebrate that!
Adjust
After you’ve celebrated your victory, it’s time to see if your original plan needs adjustment. Is it too hard to get to the gym for a workout? Think about trying a fitness app with workouts for at home.
Have you suffered an injury that’s impeding your progress? Your next step might be to check into getting some physical therapy.
Figure out if there are any small (or major) tweaks that need to happen to get you closer to your goals.
If you discover that everything is running smoothly and you don’t need to change a thing, great. But if not, now is the time to make a new plan.
Make a Plan
Your new plan may just incorporate a few small adjustments, or it might be a crumple-up-the-old-plan-and-start-all-over situation.
Either one is perfectly fine, as long as you keep trying.
Remember, personal fitness is a lot like a science experiment: You start with a hypothesis, but if you’re not getting the results you expected, it’s okay to start over with a new hypothesis and new variables.
And again, you can do this day to day, week to week, or month to month. There are no time limits on do-overs! You only fail when you quit trying.
Make an Appointment (With Yourself)
You don’t have a ref blowing a whistle to tell you it’s time to huddle up, so it’s important to give yourself reminders. Make an appointment to huddle with yourself (or a friend) in your planner, put it on your calendar, or set a reminder on your phone.
As you consistently review your goals and adjust your plans, you’ll be able to achieve the fitness-based lifestyle you want.
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