The journey towards your goal starts today. Be honest with yourself. Do not trick yourself into believing that you have a better starting-point than you do. You need to start at where you are.
I.e: If your goal is to run 10 km in less than 60 minutes it is important that you set your starting-point where you are. If you want it to be ”I can run 2 km” and you set that as your starting-point, when it is more like ”I can run 2 km, but I need to walk in between to catch my breath to prevent instant death”, you are only fooling yourself and create an unnecessary (and dangerous) obstacle.
Don’t fool yourself. If you set your starting-point to ”I can run 2 km” and you can’t – it is easy to loose motivation and feel useless. But if you set it to ”I can run 2 km with walking intervals to catch my breath” you can benchmark against it. You can see progress as you leave your starting-point behind. (Opposed to chasing to get to your untrue staring-point and perhaps never reach it.)
Be honest, do you use any excuses not to reach your goal? Are you putting up obstacles yourself? What can you do to identify when you ”don’t feel like it” and what strategies can you prepare to keep you motivated?
I.e: Running again. That TV-show that you would like to see, is it reason enough to skip the scheduled run? Or if it rains? Reason enough? Perhaps it is cold outside, and perhaps you still feel stiff from your last run? Reason enough to cancel?
There are no right or wrong in this. It is your priorities. Your goal. It is you that has to do the work to get there. And it is you that needs to make the choices on the way.
A strategy could be that if you feel stiff from your last run, perhaps a walk is a better idea instead of canceling it all together? At least you are doing something instead of nothing.
Another thing to reflect upon are your expectations. Do you expect to reach your goal fast and easy? Straight line? No obstacles? Minimal effort? Or do you expect to put in some hard work? Do you expect to run into obstacles that you were not expecting, or that are especially difficult? And what about set backs? Is it something that you are expecting and are prepared to handle if or when the come?
Right expectations on yourself can make you stronger and help you, while wrong expectations may derail you entirely. What expectations you are to have on yourself is all depending on who you are, what your starting-point is, and so on…
Also, give some thought about the price you pay to reach your goal. Is it realistic and is it something you are prepared to pay? When you set a goal and make a deal with yourself, you also need to make sure that you have the necessary time and commitment to reach it. If not, you are being unfair towards yourself in committing to something that you do not give yourself right prerequisites to fulfill.
What ever starting-point you set for yourself. As long as you are moving towards your goal, no matter how small the steps are, you are making progress! Keep it up!