In 1962, President John F. Kennedy made a bold statement in a speech at Rice University. He set a national goal to send a man to the moon and return him/her safely. At the time, our country was behind the Soviet Union in the "space race", and to quote JFK:
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
President Kennedy's goal to reach the moon is an excellent model of the goal-setting skills we intend to develop as part of the PD SELF process. First of all, the speech lays out a top-level goal: put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Category (develop the Saturn V rocket for extra-terrestrial travel) and Action (compute the thrust and payload requirements to leave the earth's atmosphere) goals are then set based on the top-level goal. Notice also, that the goals are specific, measurable, and achievable - components of any good goal (especially action goals). As we develop our self-efficacy skills, we will frequently be setting goals, measuring our progress, and adjusting our goals as necessary. If we do this well, we can feel the same exhiliration and sense of accomplishment that our nation felt in 1969 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Only this time, it will be much more personal - our health and well being is dependent on it.