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Setting clear health goals is incredibly important. If you want to increase your energy levels, reduce pain and address the root causes of your health issues then you will need to be extremely intentional about how you want to achieve these results.

If you are already dealing with chronic health problems, then it becomes even more important that you learn this. In this post, I share with you 3 benefits of setting clear health goals.

3 benefits of setting clear health goals

1. Eliminates goal competition– Your individual goals compete with each other for your time and attention. If you are not careful about which goals you chose to work on, you may end up struggling. In other words, goal selection is as important as achieving your goals. You can focus and concentrate your time and energy on just a few well selected goals and achieve them.

2. Increases the chances of actually achieving your goals– You are likely to stick to your goals if you make a specific plan as to where, when, and how you will perform the behaviour. I have written about starting start new, healthy habits in earlier post, you can read it here.

3. Reduces decision fatigue– Research shows that willpower is like a muscle and gets used up and fatigued as we keep using it time and again. This has major implications for the goals that we set and the results that we see. A clear set of goals helps us to stay on track, commit to it and work towards it without relying on willpower.

I use this daily planner to help me achieve the 3 daily goals that I set for myself.

Goals and systems

However, there is an important distinction that you should understand.

Goals are useful for setting the direction that you want to head towards. However, you need proper systems in place for actually making progress.

As the habits expert James Clear says

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems“.

Setting proper systems in place and becoming clear in what you will be doing will set you up for success.

For eg. if we are planning to eat a healthy diet, are you clear on the exact steps?  What type of meals are you going to make? Salads, soups, a plant based diet? Which days are you planning to have these? Every single day or on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays? Are you going to cook these meals or order them from a restaurant?

Setting clear health goals

The more clarity we have on how we plan to implement a new habit or reach a goal the more likely it is that we will be able to achieve it. However, if it is not very obvious when and where we need to take action it is not easy to implement it. Without setting clear health goals, it can become difficult to live the kind of life that you dream of.

Waiting for a disease to be diagnosed before you take action is like waiting for the horse to bolt before you shut the stable door. Creating healthy habits allows you to take preventive measures to support your body’s immense healing powers. If you are already dealing with an illness, having a set of clear health goals provides you with a roadmap towards good health.

Either way, focusing on low effort foundational habits with the help of goals builds your confidence levels and deal with tougher changes in the future.

As James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, had said,

 Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.

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