Keep your eyes on the prize.

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” —Lance Armstrong

So here you are on the road to reaching your goal. You’ve got your plan all put together. You might even be well along the road to success, but you need to understand that this is going to be difficult. You are going to come to a point where you and your body feel like you just can’t take it anymore. So how do you combat this? It is so easy to do, but we tend to make it difficult.

The first thing is to never listen to that little voice in the back of your head telling you to give up. Everyone has it. We all have our own ways of dealing with it, but it’s still there. Giving up on your goals should never be an option. Think about where our sports heroes would be if they had given up. We’d be watching some mighty boring Olympic games if those athletes decided to call it quits. You must keep in mind what you want to look like as a finished product. What must it feel like to walk around in the shoes of a healthier you? Never lose sight of that image. Face your fears head on, and as you do, you’ll see that the impossible becomes possible.

You might want to try something like this if your body needs a break during training: I enjoy watching DVDs and old training footage of my favorite practitioners. I’m always inspired by watching the masters practice on the high level that they did. I pay particularly close attention to footage of the masters practicing basics. After studying this kind of footage, I feel rejuvenated. I feel as if I could go practice and, one day, know what it feels like to move the way my heroes did.

The key to success on any level is how simple you can make your practice and how much you enjoy what you’re working on. While I agree that a workout is designed to test you, you also need to understand that it’s only exercise. Keeping your training fun keeps that interest and spark that you need in order to learn. The more you enjoy your training, the less likely you are to digress to your old way of life.

In my final post of this series on goal setting, I’ll discuss what to do once you’ve reached your goal.

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