I'd consider myself the average plus sized guy.  I've weighed 300 plus for over 10 years.  I've done the Atkins diet, used Phen-Phen and spent over $2000 with a personal trainer.  My goal was to just reduce my weight so my family would stop worrying about me.  So I've tried to lose weight in the past 10 years, but really the goal was ambiguous, and just losing weight to hit some arbitrary number just hasn't had the motivation to keep me going.

Recently I found out that my lack of action does have consequences and now I have to use a CPAP each night.  The nice benefit of this adverse health situation is that now that I've taken care of the problem, I have more energy and coupled with a suggestion from a friend, I'm now altering my goal from just losing weight to shooting for something I thought was impossible not more then a month ago, and that’s competing in a triathlon!

My wife thought it would be great, but I've got mixed reactions from my other friends and colleagues.  My buddy who talked me into competing has done several already himself and has been very supportive.  We've now worked out 5 days straight, and other then waking up an hour before I normally roll out of the sack, and the fact that every muscle in my body is sore, I feel GREAT.

Now I'm not competing in a Ironman ( 26 mile run, 3 mile swim, 112 mile bike), but a speed triathlon ( .5 mile swim, 12 mile bike, 5k run), at least for my first triathlon.  My buddy said that I'll probably drop about 50-60 llbs training for this event, and I probably won't set any speed records.  He also explained that will have to TRAIN for this event consistently every day for the next 20 weeks, since the triathlon is in Saint George Utah in May of 2007.

This made me think about goals and why this one now is a big deal to me and why others have not.  It also made me think about my mortgage career and the motivation behind wanting to succeed. Is it just to make money? Or is there some higher purpose?  Is there an ultimate "event" or "goal" we can achieve as mortgage and real estate professionals?  If there is, then can we succeed without training?  Or do we need to train consistently and work at the goal each and every day!

The other issue with goals and achievement is setting an "accountability" system in place.  Thankfully I have my buddy who's also competing in the May Triathlon.  I guess you could say I have accountability to my family to make enough to pay the bills in my mortgage business.  But what accountability system's can we set up to achieve higher levels of success in our industries?  I really can't fully answer this question yet, but it has caused me to really think of some BIG GOALS and some great ways to hold myself accountable to achieve those goals.