Tomorrow, tomorrow, you’re always a day away!
 
Annie’s anticipation of a better day in tomorrow is evidence of her optimistic outlook on life despite her dreary circumstances.
 
And there’s nothing wrong in being optimistic, but when it comes to setting, planning and achieving goals in life, tomorrow can turn out to be our nemesis.
 
Tomorrow holds idyllic promise and implies future.
Tomorrow does not call for commitment and action.
Tomorrow invites avoidance and delay.
 
Carpe Diem!
 
When you are really committed to change in your life, rather take up the call of “Carpe Diem” – Seize the day! Get stuck in there making consistent, sustainable change day after day until the change you wanted is part of your life. Start today!
 
This every day thing is not the easy path but then again, nothing worthwhile just drops from the sky. Actually, when it is harder to get something, the achievement is all the more satisfactory.
 
But, how do you get from where you are now to where you want to be?
 
One way is to start with GROW, a model created by Sir John Witmore in the 1980s. The acronym stands for:
 
Goals – start off by defining what you want to achieve, SMART goals obviously (Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Realistic and Time Bound, and writing in the present tense)
Reality – look at where you are today and identify obstacles preventing you from achieving your goal
Options – brainstorm different solutions to overcome the obstacles in your reality
Will – what do you need to do to take action and implement a plan (specific, detailed planning is not an option!)
 
In summary,

• Identify what you want to change
• Define your goal using the SMART approach (other blog articles go into detail!)
• Be honest about what is required to get from where you are now to where you want to be – what can stop you, who can stop you and what can you do about it?
• Commit by plotting out the actions that are needed from today (seize the day, remember?), step by step until the day that you plan to achieve your change

 
How can a Life Coach help, you might ask? Firstly, a life coach will guide you through the process that I’ve outlined above. More importantly though, a life coach will be your support, your cheer leader, your adviser and your partner from start to finish. How can you be without one?

This post shares an interesting discovery that I made while unpacking the impact of one of my goals for 2026.
 
I decided that one of my goals for 2026 is to complete the 1400km expedition challenge on my Garmin app.
 
Despite knowing that I walked a total of 800kms in 2025, I felt that walking 1400km in 2026 is well achievable and realistic. It’s only 600 more than I did in 2025, right? I patted myself on the back for creating a SMART goal.
 
Articulating my 2026 SMART goal
 
See my checking and thinking in the table below:

Now that I have my end state, the next step is to plan out milestone by milestone from today until 31 December what I will need to do.
 
Planning how to achieve my goal:
 
I decided that I will walk every day except for a Friday and one of the days over a weekend because it is good to factor in rest days. This means my plan is to walk on 5 days of the week – doing this for 52 weeks means I will walk on 260 days for the whole year. I am still feeling very satisfied with my goal and attempt to keep healthy and fit in 2026.
 
Given that my total goal is 1400kms, it means that I need to complete just over 5kms every day on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday or Sunday. A total of 25kms in a week.
 
Hmmm, ok! I need to put aside an hour on each of those days as this is how long it takes me to walk the distance.
 
Hmmm, alright! This works perfectly for me now while I am still on leave but I am starting to be unsure about how practical and realistic this is when I get back to the office again and my normal routine is back in place. In 2025, I generally (in a good week) fitted in a 3km walk twice during the week and a total of around 10-12kms over the weekend giving me a total of 18kms per week. Hmmm, again – a difference of 7kms compared to my goal total.
 
What I don’t want, is to set myself up for failure or constantly feel that I am having to make up the kilometers that I potentially am not getting to.
 
At this point, I am appreciating the outcome of my planning exercise: although I created a SMART goal, the planning has shown that it could become more than I can realistically expect to achieve.
 
I want to review my goal – I do want to do more than 2025 and therefore decide to still aim for the 1400kms but rather extend my end date. I decide to target 4kms on a Tuesday and Thursday and 15kms total over a weekend. This gives me a total of 1196kms for the year – a gap of 204 kms. I therefore extend my end date to 1 March 2027 to realistically allow myself to achieve the goal while still targeting more walking distance than in 2026.
 
The point is - a goal update is quite acceptable during planning
 
Now, I have a proper SMART goal. My point is that the exercise to plan out how to achieve my goal actually pointed out that my answer to the “R” – is it realistic – was not correct. And that’s ok because the goal and the plan go hand in hand – I am much happier with my goal now that I have amended it and know for sure that it is stretching but also achievable and realistic.
 
What I don’t want to do, is to change the goal or the plan once I start.  But now that I know my goal and my plan is realistic and achievable, I am excited to start!