This blog is for all those people trying to set and keep their goals, like the New Year’s Resolutions that were made.

In the previous blog, I encouraged you to write down the reasons why you wanted to change a certain negative behavior.  I suggested that you need to think about, and write down, all of the benefits you were getting by doing that negative behavior.  I said that you had to be getting some kind of benefit, some kind of pay-off or you would keep doing it.

In this blog, I am going to give an example of a pay-off, using the goal of losing weight.  In order to lose weight, we need to eat better quality foods, eat less and exercise more.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?  So why don’t we do it?

What would be some of the pay-offs for eating too much of the wrong kinds of foods?

–   Eating relieves our stress.

–   Food comforts us when we are sad, unhappy, lonely, feeling unloved – we feel better.

–   For many of us, it is a way we feel loved

–   Food rewards us when we feel happy

–   Food is a social activity – we celebrate by eating.  We have just come through Christmas; probably the biggest ‘food’ time of the year

–   Eating relieves boredom.

These are just a few examples.  If we do get some of our emotional needs met (temporarily and arificially anyway) by indulging in whatever we want to change, these emotional needs will be the biggest barrier to successfully eliminating the problem.

That is why writing down all of the benefits you will gain by changing is so important.  At the same time, wrtie down all of the problems and negative feelings you have now because you do not have what you want.

In the next blog, I will share the goal setting success key # 2