Goal Without A Plan Is Just A Wish

i remember being at a meeting of some kind, years ago. One of the organizing ladies drafted me to move furniture, presumably because I was almost the only male under 50 in the room. But when she saw me struggling with a heavy table, she apologized and found someone else. That’s embarrassing for a young guy, and I’ve never forgotten it.

So you wouldn’t expect me to set myself a challenge of being able to do 100 push-ups, would you?

I’m doing that challenge right now, though.

I believe everyone should have a challenge to help them feel really alive. A challenge is different from stress, because you feel more in control and have a goal to work towards. And in fact, it’s one of the things that helps you to deal with your stress in other areas of life.

Here are five steps towards taking on a challenge for yourself and enjoying success after you complete it.

1. Have a desire for change

It’s one thing to sit on the couch and wish your life was better/different/more exciting, etc. But if you refuse to entertain the idea of making changes in your life, you’ll likely keep wishing instead of doing and accomplishing.

For instance, I want to be fitter and stronger. Sitting at a desk for 6 hours a day isn’t going to help me achieve that goal. So, I’ve taken up kayaking, and I want to be able to paddle strongly and for a long period, and still be able to lift the boat onto the roof of the car when I finish. I also just want to feel better physically, to take up more residence in my body. I want those things enough that I’m willing to put some effort in to get them.

It’s important to find the motivation to get off the couch and make a change. What’s your motivation for taking on a new challenge?

2. Believe you can change

I believe I can change. I believe I can rise to challenges. I believe this because I’ve done it before.

I’ve passed exams, learned languages, started businesses, built relationships. I’ve also done a similar challenge to the 100 Push-ups, namely 200 Sit ups. I went from 26 sit ups to 200. I know it can be done and I know I can do it.

What’s more, I know that when I am successful at a challenge like this, it does more for me than just whatever I get out of the goal itself. When I complete the 100 Push-ups challenge, I won’t just have stronger muscles. I’ll have greater mental strength, a sense of achievement – and further confirmation for myself that I can rise to challenges like this and complete them. Completing a challenge changes who you are in your own eyes. And each success you have builds your confidence.

What successes can you look back to in order to support your belief that you can take on a challenge?

3. Find a destination

A challenge, by definition, is a little bit above and beyond what you can currently do. It’s not more than you ever could do, though.

I don’t have the body type to win a bodybuilding contest or a weightlifting competition (nor does that interest me, actually). But there’s a big difference between “I can’t do this right now” and “I can never achieve this.”

Somewhere in that space – up towards the scary end – is your challenge. As the wonderful Catherine Caine says, “You should always try anything that makes you uncomfortable, and nothing that makes you uneasy.”

What is your challenge going to be? Can you double it?

4. Make a plan

Sometimes “make a plan” means “choose your own path.” Sometimes it means “find someone else with a plan and use theirs”. For exercise, because I’m no expert, I consult people who are experts and use their plans. The 100 Push-ups challenge comes from a website (hundredpushups.com). It tells you, based on how many push-ups you can do when you start, how many to do in each of five sets, in each of three exercise days per week, for six weeks. It builds you up gradually to the point where you are capable of 100 consecutive push-ups.

Another expert source for my challenge is ManVsWeight.com’s massive resource that features videos and directions for 113 push-up variations. That’s right-113! This way, I can work difference muscle groups and vary my routine to get stronger for my ultimate goal of doing 100 push-ups.

That’s a great model for a plan. My fellow New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary didn’t suddenly get up one morning and climb Mt Everest. He built up to it over years of mountaineering.

Your plan needs to start where you are, end where you want to be, and fill in the middle with steps in which you improve achievable. This means the steps need to be close enough together that you can get to each one from the one before. It’s like stepping stones across a river – if they’re too far apart, you’ll get wet.

Who might be able to help you make a plan to meet your challenge?

5. Implement, Implement, Implement,

Carrying out the plan is, in many ways, the hardest part. I don’t enjoy middles nearly as much as beginnings or ends. You’re neither here nor there. You’ve put in hard work, but you don’t yet have the triumph of overcoming your challenge.

Yet this is where every person succeeded who ever succeeded in any challenge. As I’m huffing and puffing with sore arms, partway through set 3 of 5, I’m not just building my arm muscles. I’m building my perseverance muscles, my determination muscles. Between the exciting moment of taking on a challenge and the exhilarating moment of completing a challenge are the thousand unglamourous moments of deciding, again and again, to keep going.

And yet, looked at another way, each one of those moments is another small victory. Every time I keep going instead of stopping, every time I push past the resistance and focus on the goal, I’m winning.

How are you going to win moment by moment on your path towards your goal?