Summer Goals: What’s Your Plan?

Hooray!  Summer is Right Around the Corner!

Summer can be a great time for you and your family to establish healthy habits.  For most of the country summer means beautiful weather and longer days.  However, as you probably already know, keeping a family physically active is not an easy thing to do.  Sure, we have a vision for the summer (we probably even have several goals) but if we don’t take the time to connect the dots it’s more likely that we will spend our time doing the things that are easier and more urgent instead of the those things that line up with our values.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?  We start the summer with high hopes of what we will accomplish.  But then life interrupts.  Maybe it was a planned interruption, like a family vacation.  Or maybe it was unplanned: a family emergency or a hectic work schedule.  And, before you know it, it’s August and the kids are either back in school or getting ready to go back.  You wonder where all the time went and why some goals went unmet.  I think many of us are painfully familiar with this scenario.  The question I want to ask is “How can we change the outcome for this summer?”

What’s Your Plan?

Personally, I have found that unless I take the time to connect the dots between my goals and what is required to meet those goals I will probably not meet those goals to the degree that I desire to.  What do I mean by that?  Let’s say you have a goal to run a 10K in August (you’ve made this a goal because being physically fit is a value of yours).  What’s it going to take for you to do this?  Do you have a training schedule?  What time of day are you going to do your training runs?  When do you need to go to bed to get adequate rest?  What types of food do you need to have on hand?  By taking the time to connect the dots on the front-end you are establishing a set of decisions you can fall back on for the rest of the summer.

I’ve heard it said that accomplishing 80% of a plan is better than accomplishing 100% of no plan.  Certainly, the more goals you have the more dots you will need to connect.  And you’re going to have to say “No” to other opportunities.  But this is just part of living intentionally, isn’t it?  As long as you goals line up with what you value this process is worth it and promises to be a rewarding challenge.