S B Coaches College - Tip of the Month November 2005




		S B Coaches College Tip of the Month November 2005 Share \|

Goal setting is a powerful process for personal development. By setting goals on a regular basis, you decide what you want to achieve, and then move step-by-step towards achieving these goals. Goals are vital for all individuals, as they provide a point for which one can strive. Athletes, parents, coaches, businessmen, employees, and people from all walks of life can reap a multitude of benefits from goal-setting.

The process of setting goals and defining targets allows you to choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know what you have to concentrate on to achieve the goal(s).

Goals give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long, pointless grind. Your confidence will also improve as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.

Goals are set on a number of different levels. First, you decide what you want to do and what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these larger goals down into the smaller goals that you must achieve so that you can reach your ultimate goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working towards achieving it.

Setting Goals Effectively

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:

State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively – “Execute this technique well” is a much better goal than “Don't make this stupid mistake.”

Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times, and amounts so that you can measure achievement. We make our athletes write specific numbers that they want to achieve (i.e. drop 2% body-fat, increase Vertical Jump by one inch, etc). If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.

Write goals down: This crystallizes the goals and gives them more force. Make sure you post your goals where you can see them on a daily basis to better focus your attention and efforts.

Keep short-term goals small: Keep the short-term goals toward which you are working small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it in spite of the fact that you may be doing things correctly day-in and day-out. Keeping goals small gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.

Set process goals, not outcome goals: You should pay close attention to setting goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more disappointing than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. These could be bad business environments, poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. You might not appreciate all the obstacles in the way or understand quite how many skills you must master to achieve a particular level of performance, so be somewhat conservative in how you define your goals. No one will put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic.

Do not set goals too low: Just as it is important not to set goals unrealistically high, do not set them too low. People tend to do this when they are afraid of failure or when they are lazy! You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them. The secret rests with finding the balance between “realistic, but challenging” and “easy.”

Framing your goals properly sets the table for effective energy output. This means the effort you put towards a certain activity will be purposeful and intended to bring you closer to achieving your goals. “Purposeful” is the key word here. Doing things without a purpose is a waste of time and energy - which is very inefficient. We need to perform every daily activity with a certain purpose. When we do things with a purpose, we are increasing our efficiency, which is the ultimate goal of training. Becoming efficient means we expend less energy to do the same or more amount of work. If we can do more work at a higher output without causing a great deal of fatigue, how successful do you think we can be? This means that we can use this energy towards other activities and hopefully become more efficient at performing those activities. Learning leads to efficiency, which is produced by goal-setting.

Adopted from: http://www.mindtools.com/page6.html