Goals are a part of life, whether you are the type of person who keeps them taped to your mirror or stored in the back of your mind. There are big goals, small goals, important goals, “wishful-thinking” goals (Chris Pine will be mine…), etc. Regardless of the type, all require a certain amount of thought, effort, and organization. Goal-setting is not only a blueprint for your own success but also a powerful tool in motivation–who doesn’t need that?

Everyone struggles with motivational issues at some point. With so many stressors and distractions constantly vying for our mind’s attention (alcohol, TV, alcohol again), feeling motivated to complete tasks can be REALLY difficult. However, it is important that goal-setting be a regularly-used skill in our daily lives. Being a serious procrastinator myself (hey, America’s Next Top Model reruns can be a little distracting, OK?), I have found that setting goals have made my thoughts and actions more organized, efficient, and clear-cut.

So how do you maximize the ability of your goals to motivate you?

Dr. Edwin Locke, a pioneer in the research of motivation and goal-setting (and probably a guest star in one of your PSY101 lectures), provides five characteristics of goals that each contribute to the goal’s effectiveness of promoting motivation. You wanna be successful (uh, duh!), take these into consideration:

Clarity
Goals that are clear are ones that are straightforward, able to be measured, and cause you to take action! Being specific is key—adopting a definite time set for a goal and an detailed description of what you want to achieve allows for a better understanding of potential rewards. Vague goals such as “Lose weight” or “Get ahead on schoolwork” are unlikely to motivate. However, goals such as “Lose 30 pounds by September 1st,” or  “Finish 3 assignments for next week before going out to the keg race,” are more likely to create a more tangible ending, therefore boosting motivation.

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"I think I'm just gonna take a little snoozer right here for a minute...."

You know those days when, no matter how much you know you should workout, you just can’t bring yourself to put on a sports bra and sweat for an hour or two? You’re too tired. The futon is too comfortable. And those Project Runway re-runs need to be watched again so you can analyze the way Heidi Klum says “Yooah in, oar yooah owit”…

Well, don’t be too hard on yourself – you only have so much willpower. Literally.

According to a recent study at McMaster University, you have a limited amount of willpower. Whether you’re avoiding the cookies your roommate baked, or forcing yourself to concentrate on finishing that essay that’s due in a few hours, you use up your willpower throughout the day. You can burn up your stores of willpower mentally or physically. And as the test subjects demonstrated, loss of willpower causes you to work out at a lower intensity, work out less often, and makes your workout less effective.

So looking back, you might think that you were justified by not working out. “Oh well. That’s all of the willpower I had for today!” Well, woman, that is not the case. Read More »

You know that in order to lose weight you must eat healthy and exercise. However, I have a little secret for all of you! Recent studies have shown that there are actually 2 other proven methods that (when combined with eating healthy and exercising) increase weight loss.

Did I mention they have nothing to do with food or entering a gym?

That’s right. Keeping a journal of what you eat as well as betting friendly wagers against other dieters has been shown to help people who couldn’t seem to lose weight any other way.

Let’s break these two down to figure out how you can use these techniques to shed those pounds and get in shape.

Money gets results

According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, people who have financial incentives to lose weight have much higher rates of success at dieting than those who do not. Instead of losing weight for vanity or health, the newest incentive is cash and it’s working wonders for motivating previously unsuccessful dieters. It starts as a bet against someone (a friend, coworker, or family member) that you will lose more weight. Whoever comes up short loses their money to the bigger loser. Somewhere between a competitive personality and greed, weight is successfully lost with enthusiasm.

This trend started out as grass roots after a few studies proved it a success. Its methods are now being duplicated on the internet on sites like StickK.com, fatbet.net and makemoneylosingweight.com. To learn more about online weight loss bets, check out this New York Times article. Read More »

There are a lot of traditional expectations of women to which I don’t match up with smoothly. For the most part, I don’t even care to bother meeting up to these expectations. Except for this one thing:

I wish I could be cleaner.

I don’t have a neat-freak bone anywhere in my body. I’m not convinced that I even want a neat-freak bone. But when I walk into some friends’ homes and everything is immaculately clean…it makes me wonder why I too can’t prioritize cleaning.

In order for me to clean, I really need to be expecting guests. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not DIRTY. I don’t leave food out, I do the dishes, take out the trash, blah blah. Oh, and I bathe. But I’m A-OK with leaving my shoes, jackets, purses, etc. all over the living room and I don’t mind if my roomies do, either. I don’t care if there’s makeup all over the counter and the bathroom floors aren’t spotless. Did I miss a memo somewhere?

It doesn’t even ‘run’ in my family. My family is actually very neat and they often argued with me over being somewhat of a slob growing up. I guess I just can’t see why cleaning is more important than sitting on the couch.

It’s not something I necessarily learned from my friends, either. In fact, my friends are kind of the people who make pay attention to the fact that I’m not like them. Take my good friend, Cara, for example. She mops her floors incessantly. When we get into her place from spending the evening out she literally – no f*cking joke – mops the floor. Am I crazy for thinking this is crazy? Read More »

I never have dealt well with “going” to work or “answering” to a boss. I know it sounds rather hopeless, but I have an entrepreneur-esque mind and I set out to never “go” to work or “answer” to anyone I didn’t want to answer to. And so far, I’ve achieved that goal.

I work 100% freelance. I make my own schedule. Some days I don’t work at all. I sleep in when I want to. I go out ’til 7 am if I want to. Hell, I take off to California if I want to. There are no rules, really, and many a friend have drooled their envy all over my face without taking a minute to really understand how NOT easy working for yourself can be. If you’re considering pursuing this lifestyle, but you’re not sure if it’s for you, maybe I can be of some help.

MOTIVATION

You’ve gotta be able to be self-motivated. You’ve got to make money and build your career REGARDLESS of the fact that there’s an X-Files marathon on channel 17. Read More »

Please note that it has been almost a month since I signed up for my race. I haven’t been to the gym since that initial trip, although I was rejected from said gym when a new front desk worker didn’t even know there was a corporate gym in the building and I had left my ID at home. Instead of delving right into running, I started walking home whenever it was warm enough and I wasn’t heading to class directly from the office.

I’m failing miserably and I haven’t done anything yet.

The walking surprisingly has given me more energy, but I’ve realized that it’s not quite the same as a nice jog or run. Feeling a bit pathetic, I decided I needed to change my diet again and pretend I actually cared about eating healthy food. I traded actually running for giving up chocolate and other sweet snacky foods. I subside largely on vegetables, natural peanut butter, and whole grains. I’m not exactly a vegetarian, but for the most part I don’t really eat meat or seafood more than once or twice a month, so I’ve been trying to find healthy, creative ways to get my protein.

Natural peanut butter is my addiction, with avocados at a close second. They’re not at all the same but they’ve been a good way to get healthy fat. Also have been working on getting protein from beans, lentils, chickpeas, and the like, so I don’t make myself anemic. Read More »

Do you fear slipping into that bikini? Do you know that those boxes of pizza and cans of beer that piled up in the corner of your apartment all year will no longer find shelter under a sweatshirt? And with the dawn of summer upon us that means … yes you guessed it, diet and exercise. The two most feared words in a college student’s dictionary. But do not fear; this summer will be different; just wait and read.

I try to stay in shape at college, but diet and exercise take a backseat at the end of the semester when I so meticulously balance my time between finals and end of year parties. So, we must enter summer looking our worst at the time we want to look our best. Thus we embark on a drastic last minute heave to get in shape.

Why should you listen to me? Because you remember that kid who was on a first name basis with Joe the Good Humor man and wore t-shirts in the swimming pool. Well, that kid was me and this emotional scarring early in life created a 20 year old overly obsessed with nutrition and exercise.

So now its time to dive into what you must do to impress that prospective summer fling:

Be reasonable: Do french fries, pizza, or hot wings in any way sound healthy? If you want to get that summer body find an alternative: grilled over fried, salsa/hot sauce/mustard over mayo, yogurt over ice cream, Splenda over sugar, diet over soda, wheat over white, fruit over candy. Read More »