Visually tracking your goals has been shown to boost motivation and consistency. These wellness wheel printables can be used to track your progress towards adopting healthier habits and build momentum as you work towards your goals.
Tips to Make Your Health Goals a Reality
Have you ever set a goal, only to forget about it a few months later? Maybe you’ve attempted to track your calories or improve your diet, only to lose momentum after a week or two. If this is you, you aren’t alone—especially after the crazy year we’ve all had. But with Spring in full bloom, now is the perfect time to reevaluate your health goals and recommit to them—and actually achieve them!
When it comes to actually achieving our goals, visually tracking your progress can create accountability, structure, and momentum. Visual goal tracking can help you create a system that supports your efforts and gives you something to rely on to keep you motivated and moving forward. Here’s how you can get started.
Determine Your Goals
The first step to tracking your goals is to first determine what they are. This first step is important, because choosing the right health goals can make or break your progress. It’s helpful to set your health goals using the S.M.A.R.T. framework: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Instead of choosing a goal like “lose weight”, make it more specific—”lose X pounds a week” or “eat one extra serving of vegetables per day.” It’s also critical that you ensure your goals are attainable. While a goal of losing 50 pounds in a month might be what you want, setting an impossibly high goal can leave you feeling discouraged or defeated if you find you’re unable to achieve it.
Remember Your “Why”
The process of achieving your goals can be overwhelming and of course, challenging. When you inevitably hit some roadblocks along the way, it can be easy to get discouraged or to lose hope if you’ve fallen off the wagon. That’s why it’s so important to always remember your “why”—why did you set these goals in the first place? Maybe your “why” for wanting to lose weight is so you have more energy to play with your kids or to finally compete in a 5K race. Maybe your “why” for cutting out coffee is to improve your sleep hygiene and find more focus in your daily routine.
Whatever your “why” is, always remind yourself of it when things get tough. Ultimately, external rewards like slimming down or fitting into your favorite pair of jeans won’t sustain your motivation for the long haul. But remembering the real reason you want to achieve your goals and the positive impacts it can have in your life can help you stay focused and enthusiastic, especially when you feel like giving up.
Don’t be afraid to adjust your goals
Visual goal tracking is great for helping us recognize where our strengths and weaknesses lie. Everyone’s health journey is unique, and what someone else can accomplish in one month might take you six months—and that is okay! If you decide on your goals only to find a week or month down the road that they are too challenging, don’t beat yourself up. Simply rework your goals to better align with what you know you’re capable of! Reaching our health goals is not a linear process, and being open to adjustments along the way will set you up for more success.
If you need to adjust your goals, this doesn’t make you a failure—it makes you realistic, and by reworking your goals to be in line with what you know you’re capable of, you honor yourself and the goals you wish to achieve. And, you increase your odds of actually achieving them! There’s no rules for the journey of adopting healthier habits. The only rule is that you stay committed to the process and keep showing up for yourself every day.
Ultimately, visual goal tracking can transform the process of adopting healthier habits from daunting to exciting. When you have a visual reference of what you’ve accomplished and how far you have left to go, you’re able to find more motivation and enthusiasm along the way.
To help you get started, these printable wellness wheels were designed by CreditRepair to help you start tracking your personal health goals. It’s never too late to make positive changes in your life—sometimes you just need some structure to help you get started.
Download: wellness-wheels
