Motivation is the fuel that powers your goals toward becoming a reality. If you’re not motivated and inspired by your goals, you won’t achieve them. And if you don’t have goals, you won’t be motivated to improve.
A simple way to measure your level of motivation is to use what we call the get-out-of-bed test. Do your goals make you want to get out of bed and hurry toward their achievement? Do they keep you up at night, excited, unable to go to sleep because you’re too busy pursuing them? If so, your level of motivation is strong. If not, then you need to set better, more inspiring goals. This does not mean you will always feel great about getting out of bed, for we are human, and sometimes our motivation ebbs and flows, but it should be there most of the time if you are seeking important goals and doing the goal-setting process in the correct manner.
Many athletes tell us that at times they lose their motivation to compete in their sports. They complain that it’s no longer fun, that their coaches’ demands annoy them, that their passion for training isn’t what it used to be. When we ask these athletes what their current goals are, they usually say, “I don’t know — I haven’t thought about it.” They’re focused on the misery and pain and complaining. They’ve lost focus on their goals and the reasons they compete, and their motivation has declined because of it.
When you get into a car, you usually know your destination. When you start driving toward your destination, you’re focused on making sure you reach it, which helps you adjust when you encounter obstacles, such as closed roads, traffic jams, and passing trains blocking the intersection. You’re committed to reaching your destination, but you more than likely keep a flexible approach to getting there, depending on the circumstances and time of day. The same is true with goal setting in your sport. You need to know where you’re headed. Then, after you’ve set inspiring goals, you need to stay flexible in your approach to making them come true. Obstacles will come in many forms — injuries, coaching decisions, sickness, and other unforeseen training issues. Your job as an athlete is to keep your mind focused on your goals, which, on occasion, requires that you take alternative routes to success.
Goal setting is both art and science. The key to good goal setting is outlining goals that inspire and motivate you. They should wake you up early and keep you up late at night!
Setting Effective Goals
Goal setting is really about being able to answer a couple simple questions:
Where do you want to go in your sport?
What will athletic success look like when you accomplish it?
In the following sections, we walk you through setting your long-term and intermediate goals, making sure your goals are specific and challenging, and setting timelines for your goals.
Determining your goals
Goals can be divided into the following categories:
Long-term goals: One to three years
Midterm goals: Six months to one year
Short-term goals: One to six months
Immediate goals: One day to one week
In order to achieve your goals, each goal should build on the last. In other words, goals should be successive and cumulative. If you want to be an all-American, you have to start by being all-conference. Before that, you have to get enough playing time to be noticed. Before that, you need to earn a spot on the team. Start with the end in mind when you set about determining your priorities and goals in your pursuit of athletic success.
Long-term goals
You need to start by setting your long-term goal — this is the goal that will guide and inspire you to greater heights as an athlete. It’s usually set at about one to three years out. Anything longer than that is unrealistic as a timeline, since things change so rapidly in our current world.
What’s the difference between a goal and a priority? A goal is an outcome around which you focus your attention — it’s the purpose toward which your efforts are directed. A priority, on the other hand, is a goal that is more important to you than other goals. Priorities are simply the goals that are most important to your success. All goals are important, but as an athlete, you need to set priorities to help shape your destiny. Which goals you’ve prioritized as most important will determine the magnitude of your success in your sport. Choose your priorities wisely — they’re critical to your success. It is important to remember that sometimes your priorities will involve setting certain goals in specific aspects of your sport development — such as a certain skill, a fitness area such as speed, or a mental area, such as learning to manage pressure and maintain poise more effectively.
Here are some examples of long-term goals:
Be the starting goalie on the team.
Improve my national recognition among college coaches.
Become all-conference.
Be one of the mentally toughest players in the state.
Midterm goals
Next, set approximately three midterm goals that you intend to achieve in about six months (or half a season). These goals should be what we like to call process goals, or goals that deal with how you plan on going about doing things. For example, if your long-term goal is to become an all-conference athlete, your midterm process goals might include the following:
Out-hustle every person on the field.
Be the best-conditioned athlete on the field.
Become