How to set your Health goals

All of us need to have health goals, like any other Pillar if we wish to improve, enhance and in general live life to the fullest we must be Healthy.

We probably all had the regular Health goals:

• Loose 10 pounds

• Workout 3 times a week

• Run a half marathon

• Practice mindfulness every day

In this article I would like to broaden the view on why, what, how and when to set our Health goals and besides providing the motivation and tools for the goal setting process encourage to take it to the next level, let’s dive in and review the “goals questions”:

Why do we need Health goals?

If we wish to be “Healthy” than we need to:

• Priorities our Health.

• Set challenging goals in order that we can keep improving our Health versus just maintaining it.

• Have systems in place for continues and constant Health enhancing activities (as in all endeavors we wish to have momentum at our side but for Health it’s even more critical)

All of the above is accomplished by using Goal setting best practices.

What our Health goals should be?

Our health goals can and should be divided first to Physical and Mental

Further division is to differentiate external and internal goals.

Since it can be a bit confusing let’s review some examples for each of the categories:

Physical

• External: Loose 10 pounds.

• Internal: Avoid sweets and pastries for 3 months.

• External: Run half a marathon in less than 4 hours.

• Internal: Workout at least 3 times a week for 3 months.

Mental:

• External: Not yell at my kids for 1 month.

• Internal: Not get upset when my boss criticizes me.

• External: Once a week spend at least 1 hour in a positive conversation with a person you care for.

• Internal: Practice mediation for 10 minutes a day every day for 3 months.

Now that we have the some examples it’s important to keep in mind the the goals one sets should align with one’s schedule and life since typically our health goals and habits are the “first ones to go” it’s even more important than in the other pillars that the goals will as much as possible seamlessly integrate into one’s life and align with values and priorities or we won’t stick to them.

How and when to set our Health goals?

Addition to the guidelines in the goal settings article.

One more important aspect is the “very long term” - our Health is the pillar that enjoys most of the compounding effect of constant working on it and has the biggest impact when we neglect it even for a very short time (your Wisdom (learning) probably won’t suffer much in the long run from taking 1 month off but even a single weekend of eating unhealthy foods, smoking, drinking or taking drugs on the physical side or spending a night in a very dangerous and stressful enviorment can have long term detrimental effect on our health) and so we must keep this in mind when we use the goal setting best practices