An interview with Uta

Good goals are the key to staying motivated and getting the most from yourself. But what is a good goal? What does it have to do with your wishes and desires? Once you have a good goal, what can you do to maximize your chance of meeting it? What should you do when you encounter obstacles along the way? To learn more about these vital topics, read this interview with Uta.

Let’s start with a fundamental question: Why bother setting goals? What does that have to do with motivation?

A good goal can give you guidance. It provides a structure for the future so that you can stay focused and motivated. It will help you to take the magic step out the door.

How would you define a good goal?

A good goal is as specific as possible. If you say, “I want to get in shape,” that’s a wish more than a goal. It might feel like a vision to you and a desire to change something in your life, like in this example to get in shape. And it’s easy to say, but hard to know how to achieve it. To make that wish come true, most of us need a more specific goal—“I want to lose 10 pounds in the next two months,” or “Two months from now, I will be working out three to five times a week.” So you have that wish of getting in shape, then a specific goal of how to make that wish come true, and this leads to other specific, shorter goals—to be working out five times a week in two months, maybe you’ll start this week with one workout.

Set your goals as realistically as possible. Again, have several small goals that build to reaching your big one. For example, say you want to run a 5K in a certain time. That’s your big goal—keep it in the back of your mind, but in the weeks and months leading up to it, set achievable, short-term goals that bring you toward your big goal. In this case, first you would work on building your endurance, so that the 5K distance isn’t a problem for you. Then you would add speed training so that you can cover the distance faster. And so on and so forth, all leading up to being able to run the distance at the goal pace you’ve set.

What about in a broader sense? How do I know if the goal I’ve set is a good goal for me?

When you talk about your goals, you need to know what you really want, because this helps you to formulate the right goal, and it helps you later to follow your plan to reach your goal. You have to feel a passion for your goal. It’s also good if you clarify if your desire comes from within or whether it’s being influenced from outside. For example, a child might say she wants to run a mile in a certain time, but that desire could be coming from what she thinks her parents want her to do. So it’s essential that you ask yourself: Is that what I really want to do myself? Does it come from within myself? That does not mean that parents could not have a positive influence in motivating their children.

Okay, so let’s say I’ve set a goal that’s like what you say-specific, realistic and personally meaningful. What then?

The next step is executing or realizing your goal. What are the tools to help you do that? One tool is to write down your goal. It’s proven that when you write something down, you create a connection between your conscious and subconscious. Your goal then becomes more vivid.

Another tool could be to share your goal with a friend or family member, someone who could be a companion in achieving your goal.

The next tool is that, once you’ve set your goal, you have to adjust your focus so that you make space for the time it will take to realize your goal. For instance, maybe you’ll need to carve out the time to work out more often, or you’ll need to create space in your work day by extending your lunch break to 90 minutes, and then coming into work earlier or leaving later. Once you’ve decided where that time will come from, tell the people who will be affected—tell your family you might getting up earlier some mornings, or tell people in your office you’ll be staying later to make up for taking more time in the middle of the day.

A good tool is to visualize how you’ll feel when you reach your goal. That will help you to make it more clear, and will bring you more energy, determination and motivation.

Another mental tool is something I learned from yoga: The smallest changes can have the most profound effects. We often have habits that are hard to break. They are persistent and become part of our character, but we want to let go of them. The lesson from yoga is that small changes have a trickle effect that can be profound. That means if you already are able to point out the changes you want to make in your life, small, little steps will go a long way.

For example, say you feel burnt out, that your life is no fun and that you never have time for yourself. To start to break that cycle, take a very small step. You need only one hour a week to do whatever you want to do—maybe it’s to drink a nice tea and read a magazine you haven’t had time for. See how it feels to start to break that cycle, little by little, and to move away from where you are to where you want to be, slowly. Or say you have a big goal of exercising five times a week. If you’re not exercising at all now, suddenly making that change could be overwhelming. But what if you start with one day a week? And then what if you can manage to go twice a week?

What elements of character do you think are helpful in reaching goals?

Someone who is inspired by ideas and goals, but also it’s very important that you’re truthful with yourself. You need to be aware of whether you’re progressing toward your goal or if you’re stuck. Some of us get stuck and don’t realize it, even if others tell us. So it’s very important to be able to evaluate how you’re doing and be able to figure out why you might be stuck. Resetting your goals isn’t defeat—making adjustments along the way allows you to grow.

Another important mental part of achieving goals is accepting that you’ll have to sacrifice something to reach your goal. If your goal is to work out more often, you’ll have to make time somewhere during your day. If your goal is to have a good breakfast most days so that you’re energized for the rest of the day, you’ll have to structure your morning so that you have the opportunity to eat well.

Let’s say I’m making good progress toward my goal for a while, but then I stagnate. What should I do?

If you can’t meet your short-term goals, try not to dwell on that. The whole process should be fun, an adventure, something you want to do. A big reason we often don’t meet a big goal is because we get stuck on short-term goals along the way. For example, maybe you can’t get past a certain distance while trying to build your endurance. In that case, adjust your short-term goal by breaking it into even smaller ones—instead of trying to go from 3 miles to 5 miles, work up to 4 miles, or even 3.5 miles.

Even if you are making good progress toward your goal, it’s good from time to time to reevaluate. Does your goal still really motivate you? Do you still get excited thinking about how you’ll feel when you reach your goal?

Can you give an example of when you’ve made these sorts of adjustments?

Two examples. Within a specific day, if I wake up and don’t feel well, I will reset my goals for the day in terms of my training and what work I’ll accomplish. I’ll restructure my day to accommodate how I feel but still do the things I need to do.

An example from my competitive career is before the World Cup 15K in 1991. Six weeks before it, I got injured and couldn’t train like I wanted. But it was a team competition, and I still wanted to do it for that reason. I adjusted my primary goal for the race from my individual performance to helping the team as best I could. This took the pressure off me to try to fight through the injury. It also helped me set new short-term goals—I would rearrange my schedule and add water running so that I could be healthy and still fit for the World Cup. It worked out well—I was able to place third in the race, and we won the team competition.

It’s easy to imagine you setting a goal such as, “I will win this year’s Boston Marathon.” What about away from competition? What’s an example of a non-competitive goal you’ve set for yourself?

I struggle with going to bed early enough. This is something I’ve worked on for a long time. Because I travel so much, it can be hard to have a set schedule. When I travel, I set a goal that within three or four days I’ll have adjusted and will go to sleep at the right time every night. To reach this goal, I set a time for when I’ll go to bed, and then I make it possible to be in bed by this time by structuring my day—my work, my training, my appointments—so that I can get everything done, so that I’m not still working on tasks late at night.