So that was christmas. How was it for you? Regardless of how naughty it was, or whatever your goals are for 2018, Mark Laws is here to get you going not just in January, but for the whole year

Follow these simple steps and you will stay on track beyond January… 

It’s that time of year again;  the credit card bills are an imminent concern. You had the best of intentions. You even went to the gym… to use the sauna. Yet if you are going to look good on the beach in a few months then we need to find a way to get you motivated, and keep you motivated.

1 Assess your lifestyle

You might not think this sounds very important but it is, and it is the reason that most people give up. Trying to make your life revolve around your newfound passion for the gym is no different – no matter how hard you try, it just won’t fit.

But rather than giving up you simply need to flip it around and make your gym/training sessions fit around
your life.

You do this by identifying the non-negotiable aspects of your life. When do you work? What days does your partner have work/social plans?

Create a weekly/monthly planner and insert all of these non-negotiable lifestyle events and there will be some gaps. Instead of filling these by uploading dog videos to the internet, make this your ‘gym/training time’.

2 Short-term goals

If we went to the local archery club, and you got all dressed up like Robin Hood, would you have more or less fun if there was a target to aim at?

If you answered ‘more’, please take yourself to the nearest asylum and hand yourself in. If you answered ‘less’ then you are probably going to be much more motivated if you have something to aim for.

Now, would you like that target
to be really far away and impossible to hit, or a little bit closer and easier to hit?

I’m going to have a stab in the dark that initially it would be best to start off with a nice big target that is fairly close and easy to keep hitting. Right?

Set yourself some very achievable short-term goals that will make you feel a mild sense of accomplishment. The smaller and easier the target the better. For now…

3 Have a specific long-term goal, and reach it

Before long, those small easy-to-hit targets won’t be enough to satisfy your needs. For this reason, you will also need a very specific long-term goal, however seemingly impossible it may be.

My advice here would be to try and make this goal performance-based. Performance goals, rather than aesthetic goals, for example, are more fact-based and difficult to argue with. You either ran the 10k in under 30 minutes or you didn’t – there’s no debate.

Have you ever seen a 20-stone man do 20 pull-ups? I haven’t. I could train that person to lose 5 stone but they may still not be able to do a single pull-up.

However, if I trained that man to be able to do 20 pull-ups do you think he would still weigh 20 stone?
No chance.

He got his wish to lose weight, but the long-term goal was a performance-related one, preceded by many short-term goals that dealt with his nutritional, mental and physical well-being first.

4 Accountability

In order for you to succeed,
you need to be held accountable for what you have set out to achieve. Scream from the rooftops what you are doing, why you are doing it, what your goals are and when you want to achieve them.

One of your smart-alec ‘friends’ won’t be able to hide their joy at the first sign of you failing… and if that’s not enough motivation to get you going again, I don’t know what is.

5 Seek professional help

This is a serious one. How much does achieving your goal mean to you? Chances are you won’t be able to give it a value because it is priceless. For this reason, I would think strongly about finding some room in your expenses for some help.

Just make sure you seek the help of an established professional who can document many success stories and who is far too busy being amazing to have time to post on Facebook about how great they are every
two minutes.

6 Prepare to be patient and persistent 

Finally, you need to accept that nobody in the world has ever got a six-pack in 28 days. The average amount of time it takes to develop a habit is 66 days, but it can take much longer, so you need to be prepared to work hard for at least three months before allowing yourself to give up.

Nothing worth having is ever easy to come by, so you must be prepared to be patient and persistent.