Reach Your Goals by Aligning Your Actions With Those Goals

Last night I was taking a closer look at my goals and I realized something. My top two goals in 2011 are to lose weight and to save approximately $15,000 for our big emergency fund and a “newer” used car.

As I was considering what I could do to make sure I do something every day that contributes to my success, I realized something. I have a blog, Enemy of Fat, just kind of hanging out in the enchanted land of blogger abandonment, all the while I’m writing for another blog I started called Inside C’ville. That blog does nothing at all to help me reach my goals. In fact, you could probably argue that it has encouraged me to eat out more than I probably should — for financial reasons, but also for health reasons.

Anyway, I am essentially saying I want to lose weight, but my actions to date have not reflected my desire to accomplish those goals. Inside C’ville is just a site that may or may not make some money down the road, but Enemy of Fat, could be a road to both — a more healthy life as well as some additional income. I could use Enemy of Fat and my passion for helping others to help motivate people to lose weight.

I’m not sure what the outcome will be as far as what happens to Inside C’ville, but what I realized was that if I am going to spend any time at all building a new blog, it should be the one that is going to help me reach my goals.

In the next few weeks, hopefully by the end of this month, I will soon be actively blogging here at Enemy of Debt about finance, as well as over at Enemy of Fat for health and weight loss. You want finance — come here. If you want health and weight loss — go there. If you want both, well, you know what to do! ๐Ÿ˜€

For me this was a no brainer but look at how long it took me to figure it out! I have no choice but to stop doing one thing in order to achieve another much more important thing. Plus, the truth of the matter is that I really do not enjoy writing reviews, something I learned after launching Inside C’ville, but a reality nonetheless. Writing a review feels like a chore. I”d rather stick to what I’m passionate about doing and becoming.

Sometimes you have to look around and take inventory of your time and how it is spent. Are you doing everything you can to reach your most important goals? Are you doing anything that is taking time away from what IS more important?

Is what you’re doing going to get you out of debt?

Share your thoughts below, but first, check out this video I made that is accomplishing a number of things, some of which include overcoming my fear of making video posts and being more transparent about the reality of my health.

About Brad Chaffee

18 Responses to “Reach Your Goals by Aligning Your Actions With Those Goals”

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  1. Travis @DebtChronicles says:

    Great Video, Brad. I really feel that being held accountable is a major key to achieving any goal – especially weight loss. My wife and I were enrolled in Weight Watchers a few years ago, and on weeks where we felt we hadn’t done well we talked about skipping the meeting because we didn’t want to face the scale. But we went anyway, and were glad we did in order to a.) validate what we had done that week didn’t work b.) have a group of people tell us it was OK, and that we’d knock it out of the park the next week.

    Then there’s that Wii fit thing. I tried using that as my accountability mechanism for awhile. When I felt I hadn’t done well, I would just not do my weigh in…can you believe it? I didn’t want some artificial voice telling me I had gained weight.

    You’ve really stuck yourself out there and asked to be accountable. I applaud you for that. Please make sure it you advertise loud and clear when you “launch” enemy of fat for real – as I’m very interested in following your journey!

    • Brad Chaffee says:

      Thanks Travis! You’re right, accountability is key, and I’ve put myself out there before, but not really when I think about it. I just kind of put myself out there. I’ll definitely announce when I have “officially” re-launched” Enemy of Fat. Right now it’s set up as a free blog but I’m going to take the next step to hosting it really soon. Thanks for the great support my friend! THANK YOU! ๐Ÿ˜€

  2. Alicia says:

    I think its great that you put yourself out there like this. Sounds like youre taking steps in the right direction. I have to disagree with you though on the part where you read working out is not necessary. I think it is absolutely important when working towards weight loss and healthy living. Also, good job on not restricting yourself….. everything in moderation.

    As far as what I’m doing to get out of debt, I’ve picked up additional hours at work, and have been selling old school books on Amazon. Whatever I make, I put on a credit card. I’ll be happy when I can actually save the extra money I make!

    • Brad Chaffee says:

      Good morning Alicia! ๐Ÿ˜€ Thank you so much for the support and leaving your thoughts here today. I think you misunderstood me or I may not have made myself clear about what I meant. It’s probably the latter. ๐Ÿ™‚ I wasn’t saying that exercise wasn’t important, I was saying it was. It’s just not something a person should do to lose weight, but something they should do period, because it IS so good for you. The author made the point that too many people dive into exercise with the sole purpose of losing weight. When they do that they fail to address the other issues that ARE more important to actual weight loss which is nutrition. They also end up feeling like exercise doesn’t work when they fail to lose weight. You don’t have to work out to lose weight, but you do have to eat less calories than you burn each day. Exercise is great for health reasons which is the very reason I have made it a goal each and every week to exercise — because it’s healthy, not to lose weight. (The losing weight part is an added benefit of exercise, but not the reason we should do it.)

      Just like with getting out of debt. People shouldn’t get out of debt because they can save more money, they should get out of debt because it’s better not to owe anyone any money or pay loads of interest. The savings that comes from paying off debt is the benefit to getting out of debt but not the reason we should do it. ๐Ÿ˜€

      • Alicia says:

        Oops, I’m sorry… You’re right. Losing weight is 90% nutrition. I started running a few years ago, and have run several 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons, and 2 full marathons. During the first couple years I never lost a pound, seriously. With the increased exercise came an increased hunger… and I wasn’t always making the right food choices. Once I began changing my diet, the pounds started dropping. Good luck on your weight loss journey. You will learn SO much about yourself!

        • Brad Chaffee says:

          Very impressive with all the races! The most I have ever done is a 10K but that was on my treadmill using iFit Live! I definitely want to run a marathon one of these days! If you can run a marathon you can do anything! ๐Ÿ™‚

  3. Beth says:

    Hi Brad,
    It’s great to see you and your child ( :
    Congratulations for being accountable. I’ve battled with this too.
    I manage to keep my weight within a ten pound range but the up and down
    is terrible and not healthy. It’s the junk food! I wish you all the best and know you can do it! I will be visiting Enemy of Fat! Here’s to health!

    • Brad Chaffee says:

      Thank you Beth!

      That was Noah! He is such a sweet boy and just one of the many reasons I have to succeed with this weight loss thing. My oldest boy knows that I am trying to lose weight and goes on awesome hikes with me so he can help. ๐Ÿ˜€ I’m a lucky Dad! ๐Ÿ˜€

  4. Wade says:

    Good for you for going to work on Enemy of Fat! I have noticed that a lot of people like to blog about things like finances and health because it motivates them to reach their goals in those categories. Good Luck!

    • Brad Chaffee says:

      Thanks Wade, the Enemy of fat blog has hit the blogger boneyard twice since I started it a while back. This time I am going to bring it to life for good! ๐Ÿ˜€ Thanks for the support!

  5. Tricia K. says:

    I agree with what you are saying. I recently withdrew from a course I was taking as financially it will not change our lives within the next 10 years. It was causing me stress and I didn’t have the time to donate to get good marks. I have never “quit” anything so it was hard from an emotional point of view, but it is more important to me to have the time for my family. They grow up so quickly.

    Hugs and blessings,
    Trish

  6. Crystal H says:

    Congrats on taking that huge leap Brad. I love the lose it app. I really looked forward to keeping track of what I ate and the amount of calories burned and how it all balanced out on the app. The pounds literally fell off when I used the app every day. It certainly wasn’t easy but you have a group of people right behind you and we will cheer you on every step of the the way. Good luck!

    • Brad Chaffee says:

      I really appreciate the support Crystal, and I would love to add you as a friend on Lose it, if that’s all right with you of course. I have a lot to lose so it is vital that I am successful this time. I’ve declared 2011 the year to “Get’r Done!” LOL ๐Ÿ˜€

  7. David Willis says:

    Your transparency is inspiring. I look forward to your success story. It will help me as I write mine.

  8. This is something we all go through when trying to achieve our goals. I’ve been very successful at somethings in my live and I’ve failed at other things that I would have thought would automatically succeed because my other successes would somehow rub off on the new thing I was trying to do.

    A couple of years ago I asked my wife flat out…why do you think we succeeded in our businesses? What did we do different when we succeeded and what did we do different when we failed.

    Let me give you some history…we started our publishing company in 1991 with only $500 and made that into a multi-million dollar company that we still own debt free to this day.

    But we’ve started other businesses and put $5,000, $10,000 and even $20,000 into them and failed. These other businesses were not new ideas. Other people were succeeding at them.

    In 2005 my wife and I recorded a CD called “Exposing the Untold Truth about Money and Success”. We recorded this CD because we though people were falling into a debt trap and they were falling for lies about how to become successful.

    During the recording of that program my wife tried to describe it to me about how she felt when she knew something would workout and when something wouldn’t workout.

    When you have that “Feeling” you can accomplish anything regardless of how much money, education or experience you have.

    Well like I stated earlier I asked her that question again about why she thought we would succeed and fail at a business. She still really didn’t have a way of putting it into words that I could explain to someone else and put into use for myself. In her CD recording she put it into words but both of us didn’t realize it at that time.

    But last year I meet an incredible individual name Clint Arthur. He has a program called ‘The Last Year of Your Life’. Every Monday for an hour for a year myself and about 20 other people would discuss life, success and failure with the ultimate goal of making major improvements in our lives.

    In one of the sessions he talked about “Mantras” this is where you write down the goal you want to accomplish in a specific sentence and you re-write it and say it out loud at least 10 time per day(each).

    Check out my youtube for proof that I really did this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mgTTshe748

    This was what I was missing. For the businesses and personal goals that I achieved I had did this on accident. But after learning this from Clint I knew exactly how to do it.

    Basically what it comes down to is you/I must not just believe that we can achieve a goal. We must start living “As If” we have achieved that goal. The only way to do that is to constantly remind yourself on a subconscious and conscious level of the new life you want to have.

    Soon your body and mind will give you what you want. This doesn’t happen overnight just like your bad habits and failures didn’t happen overnight.

    To answer your question about your goal to save $15,000 you have to imagine yourself with $15,000 saved. How would you feel, how would think a person would live that saved $15,000?

    If anyone would like to learn how to structure their mantra please feel free to contact me. I’ll show you how to do it at NO CHARGE!

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