Moving Targets

Photo by Balint Mendlik on Unsplash

One of the more fascinating things with sport is that the "goal" is a moving target. To win is the goal, but who you are up against, the level of difficulty is every changing. This applies to most things in life. 

Let's say the goal is for financial security. That goal will be based on what we can bring in and what we spend. In turn, what we bring in will be contingent on what we can make and what we spend will be contingent on our needs and the economy. Given how much of the economy and rate of inflation is beyond our control. This could make us always feel we are a failure and give up any effort to gain a sense of financial security.

During my long tenure as a coach I would advise my athletes to establish goals that were based on the things they could control. For example, rather than setting a goal to win regionals, set a goal to be consistent onsighting the grade most likely to be set in routes at regionals.

If financial security is the goal, then determine an amount of savings in the bank that brings the sense of security. If there is number that gives you a sense of security, then set a goal to get to the amount you need to put into saving to get to that number, do you need a second job or other source of income? Or do you need to tighten the budget? Then set the objectives to get to the number you want.

In my experience, we are pretty good at not always choosing the right goals and really only get to know that through achieving something and finding out it wasn't really what we wanted. For example, the feeling of financial insecurity may stem from the annual salary we are getting. Looking around at folks we know and what they make, we may think we should be making more. However, it could be related more to the sense of not being valued leads to feeling financial insecurity, which leads to believing if we had more money, we would not feel this way. If the real desire is to feel valued; a feeling not contingent on the money in the bank. 

A desire to feel valued begins with valuing oneself. To achieve that goal, you have to look to yourself first to take steps to compliment your work, to value your time, to ensure you negotiate for what your personal needs are, and to live in accordance with your own values. Not only that, you must acknowledge your accomplishments every time you hit those. Gradually, you will feel that you are valuing yourself. 

Bottomline... to determine what goals to set, you need to know what leads you to the positive emotions of being fulfilled, that your contributions matter to something much bigger than yourself. An Olympian who competes to win a medal for the sense of self aggrandizement will quickly falter when the ego is battered by the better performance of another athlete.  The Olympian who competes for the love of the sport and the Nation's betterment will not be deterred by the high performance of another athlete. They will be spurred on to try even harder.