Goal setting & motivation

Why is it so important?

The level of your confidence levels is in direction proportion to whether you feel that you are in control of your life or whether life is in control of you.

Goal setting should be used for every area of your life - after all you do not want to be mistaking activity for accomplishment.

By setting yourself goals you are creating the future in advance. You are creating a desired vision of what you want.

Goal setting in sport has several advantages:

• It improves performance
• It creates motivation
• It makes your training sessions more focussed
• It increases your confidence
• It makes you feel good
• It enhances concentration

By creating goals and working towards them you will get a sense of achievement and fulfillment as you strive to improve and get better.

This in turn increases your Self Confidence.

How to set your goals

Firstly, it is important to determine what role sport plays in your life.

i.e will you have the commitment to get up at 6:00am every morning to do your training or do you play socially at the weekends and can fit in just one training session mid-week.

This decision will ultimately shape your goals.

Next, you need to think about the end game.

Whether you are an individual or a team you need to analyse the skills required for you to attain the level of success that you want to operate at.

For example, if you play baseball and you want to be able to hit more home runs you're going to have to think about the key skills in order for you to do this.

i.e

• More power
• Hand/eye co-ordination
• Practise
• Timing
• Equipment
• Etc

So, you've now got a list of the skills that you need to improve - you can start to set some goals around them.

At this stage it is important to note that your goal must be specific. You should be able to measure it by time, distance, amount etc
From the above an example of a goal might be:

• Goal - To increase the amount I bench press by 100lbs by January 20th 2003

This goal will contribute to the increasing POWER skill that is required.

Go to the gym 3 days a week on a Mon, Weds and Friday:

Today - Measure maximum bench press for 4 reps

January 20th goal - Today's maximum bench press plus 100lbs

What you would need to do next is produce an action plan of how you are going to achieve the goal.

What workouts will you perform each week?

What weights will you increase the barbell by each week?

When will you perform your next strength test?

Don't be overwhelmed with your goals

A goal like the one above is not going to be an easy pushover.

Therefore it is important that you don't set too many goals otherwise you will feel a sense of overload.

Select and work on the goals that will give you the best results in what you are trying to achieve and the ones that will get you up early and keep you up late - the goals that will motivate you the most.

Only compete with yourself when setting sports goals

For lasting motivation it is vitally important that you concentrate on setting your OWN performance goals rather than setting goals on outcomes.

Set goals on the things that YOU can control.

For example, say that you had the goal of hitting the most home runs in your club.

You increased your power and strength and you improved your hand and eye co-ordination.

You hit 30% more home runs than you did the previous year yet your club managed to persuade one of the top players in the league to join and they ran off with the home run award.

You actually had the best season of your life and hit 30% more home runs yet because you didn't win the trophy you beat yourself up about it and didn't achieve the goal.

In fact the other player had a bad season compared to previous ones and hit 20% fewer home runs than normal yet still won the trophy.

Only compete with yourself.

Self Confidence gets a severe hammering when you set yourself up for failure when in reality to get a 30% increase was an AWESOME achievement.

Don't beat yourself up if things do not go your way

There are no failures only outcomes.

You only fail if something doesn't work out and you DO NOT learn anything from it.

If you do not achieve your goal analyse the situation for next time:

• Was it unrealistic?
• Did you do everything you could to achieve it?
• Were there any external factors that made it difficult?
• Did you need more work on a certain aspect of your performance?
• Etc etc

Learn from the experience for next time, don't beat yourself up about it.

If you learn then you are one step closer to getting what you want to achieve.

Conversely, when you achieve your goals you should analyse the situation for next time also.

Always be looking to improve.

Ask yourself questions such as:

• Was the goal too easy?
• What could have gone better than it did?
• Did I uncover any more areas that I need to work on along the way?
• What will I do for next time?
• What did I learn while accomplishing this goal?

The next steps:

1. Decide on your commitment to your sport
2. Decide on what level you want to be playing at
3. What skills will you need to play at that level
4. Can you realistically get them?
5. Select some goals
6. Prioritise these goals and only work on a few
7. Write them down in detail - specifics, measures etc
8. Make sure they are based upon your own personal performance
9. Make sure they are what YOU want to achieve. Remove external opinions and influences from your decision
10. Are your goals pitched at the right level? Not too hard, not too easy?
11. See what works and what doesn't - adjust and learn from any mistakes
12. Analyse your performance whether you achieve the goal or not
13. LEARN, LEARN and LEARN some more!
14. GO FOR IT! And HAVE FUN!

Life Coach