Goal Setting – the magic noone gets
How many posts and articles, videos and books, seminars and podcasts exist on goal-setting ? … Far too many when I consider that nearly all miss the 3 ingredients that make all the difference. Here’s a quick recap of what I mean.
Big goals to little goals
People seem to get confused by how small or big goals should be. They should be both. Olympic gold medallist Lydia Lassila explains this well.
‘You’ve got to have the outcome goals. These are big and bright. The ones you think about every day. You can almost taste them. Under that goal, though, I would have all my milestone goals, and then under those, I would have the ways and strategies for achieving those goals. Before the Vancouver Olympics, I went from having pretty scattered goalsetting methods to very systematic ones where every goal was broken down into small achievable steps.’ (Lydia Lassila, Olympic Gold medallist, Women’s aerials, Vancouver, 2010)
You see you should dream big and these dreams (and associated goals) motivate you and give you energy. They are not cumbersome points on a piece of paper. These are the dreams that keep you up at night. you can’t get them out of your head. They are big and bright. It is then from this point that you start to get structured and organised and employ the more mechanical goal setting techniques (eg S.M.A.R.T.R) to write the smaller goals that you will aim for, achieve, tick off and change as you go along. The shorter and medium term goals that you hit along the way to achieving the big outcome goal.
Write them down as you want them
Remember to write down your goals as you want them to be rather than what you don’t want; that is, they should be positively stated. For example, you wouldn’t say, ‘I’m no longer struggling with my weight.’ You’d say, ‘I have excellent and healthy eating habits.’ Rather than say, ‘I won’t get angry any more when . . .’ you’d say, ‘I act with control and calmly when . . .’ Focus on what your positive expectations are – what you want to occur, rather than on things you’re afraid might go wrong. Use confident, successful, goal-oriented statements such as ‘I will . . .’, ‘I can . . .’ and ‘I’m going to . . .’ You can read more about the psychology behind this in Chapter Four of my book A Life That Counts.
Making your dreams come alive
Most people will get inspired and write their goals down on a list. There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem though is that lists are too tame and too boring. You need to turn your goals into a genuine experience that has emotional power. You need to arouse your emotions because it is this that will drive you forward. You need to change them from just words to powerful images that you can immerse yourself in and connect with and that will fire up those powerful emotional circuits in your brain that are going to be critical in your ability to change and continue to be motivated. You need to feel your goals on an emotional level. Otherwise you will just be relying on your conscious motivation which will dissipate all too quickly (how many NYE resolutions have you seen through to fruition after all). You need to make your dreams come alive – to feel all the fulfilment, excitement, joy, freedom and satisfaction – or whatever emotion that desire means to you – as if you’ve already attained your goals. You need to taste them, smell them, touch them. You need to involve all your senses so your goals become alive, vibrant, tangible and motivating. In so doing, you’ll harness the positive power of emotions (the powerful limbicsystem drivers) in the process of what you are going after. This will help make your goals the sort of thing that make you want to get off the couch and achieve them.
One way of doing this is using vision boards and visualising. As athletes we employ these techniques all the time. You can find out more about this in Chapter Five of my book A Life That Counts. And at the same time, you’ll be closing the gap between what you’re dreaming about and what you actually believe you can achieve. (By visualising your dream so powerfully in your mind, you’ll suddenly find it much easier for your mind to believe you’ll achieve the goal.)
