Leif H. Smith - Sports Psychology For Dummies

Adjusting your goals doesn’t mean you’ve failed — it just means you’re changing the course slightly or changing the timeline. Although having to adjust your goals can be frustrating, it’s a natural part of success in athletics and life.

As you move along the path of achieving your goals that you set out for yourself, it is important to understand that perfection isn’t something you should be striving for. After all, it doesn’t, and won’t ever, exist! Humans are imperfect beings, and they make mistakes, wrong choices, and fail to achieve their goals on a daily basis. Don’t even entertain the idea that you can achieve perfection in your goal-setting program. As stated, you will need to make some adjustments along the way and that is to be expected! Make sure you allow space for the ups and downs along the path to your ultimate dreams and goals. Allow space for failure, which is part of the process, and allow space for adjustments. Do your best to banish the idea of perfection from your mind, since it is something that you can’t achieve anyway.

Athletes who do accept and even expect failure and mistakes at times are the ones who maintain higher levels of motivation in the long-term. How many times do people give up immediately after failing? Thinking about New Year’s resolutions. Many people set goals to get in shape and lose weight. Once they go off their diets or miss the gym a couple of times, they give up. They stop going to the gym or start eating sweets and other unhealthy foods. This is part of the reason that gyms are crowded in January and February and then become almost empty by April — people give up because they tried to be too perfect in achieving their goals.

Goal setting isn’t easy. In fact, we’ve seen many athletes make the same mistakes when setting goals. Following are some of the most common mistakes — avoid them when you set your own goals:

Setting too many goals: Athletes and coaches tend to set far too many goals, which results in their accomplishing none of them. All the goals you set may be motivating, and make sense, but too many at one time confuses the brain and diffuses energy. Instead, pick the goals that are most important or relevant for you and tackle them one at a time. Try to master one goal and then move on to the next one — instead of trying to accomplish four or five things at the same time.

Failing to set process goals: Setting outcome goals is fun. You want to win the conference championship, hit a certain batting average, achieve a number of assists or goals, or obtain a college scholarship. Outcome goals go straight to our hearts and excite us! The next challenge is thinking about the process of how to make those goals become a reality. What will you have to do to make sure you give yourself the best chance of reaching those outcomes goals? Most athletes stop short of this, setting process goals because the task feels too overwhelming or too confusing. Just remember that if you don’t put your primary focus on your process goals, your desired outcomes won’t happen.

Leaving your goals in a drawer: Many athletes spent a lot of time before the season setting both outcome and process goals. Some teams even take a one- or two-day team field trip just to focus on the goal-setting process. As the season gets going, however, these goals seem to fade to the background. As athletes and coaches get caught up in the day-to-day grind, they lose focus on their goals and why they want to accomplish them. Goals need to be living, breathing parts of your team mission. You need to tend to them, monitor them, and adjust them throughout the season. Remember to revisit your goals at least once a week, so you don’t lose sight of what you’re working so hard for. Consider displaying your goals where you’ll see them each day, such as on a bulletin board, on the wall in front of your desk, in your locker, and so on.

Focusing too much on ego and not enough on mastery: When we discuss ego goals, we’re referring to outcome goals, like winning. Mastery goals, on the other hand, are about improving skill and performance, regardless of the outcome. You can easily get wrapped up into thinking too much about ego goals and not enough about mastery goals. When you focus on the process of skill mastery and continual improvement, you’re always getting better — even if it might not produce the win. You’re still improving quantifiably and being successful. And when you’re successful in this way, the wins will follow!

Expecting perfection: As mentioned, many athletes expect perfection in reaching goals and when they do not reach this perfection (and they never will), they give up and are hyper critical of themselves. This leads to a loss of motivation. You need to accept that you will make mistakes and then decide that you won’t give up when you do so. This is part of the process. Failing teaches you more about yourself and success and helps you build mental toughness and resilience — two other very important mental qualities we discuss throughout the book.

Chapter 4

IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering the truth about motivation

Identifying the different types of motivation

Pinpointing your current level of motivation

Increasing your motivation

Sidestepping pitfalls on the journey to greater motivation

Motivation is one of the most important and most frequently discussed topics in athletics. Coaches and parents wonder why athletes aren’t as motivated as they’d like, and athletes see their own motivation fall and wonder why. In this chapter, we explore the ins and outs of motivation.

We start by debunking some common myths about motivation — sometimes you get a better sense of what something is by finding out what it isn’t. Then we introduce you to the two types of motivation: internal and external. We help you assess your current level of motivation. (Motivation levels aren’t static — they rise and fall over time.) Then we give you some specific strategies for increasing your motivation and warn you about some situations that can wreak havoc on your motivation.

Throughout your athletic career, your motivation will change. But one thing can remain constant: your ability to measure your motivation, increase it when you need to, and respond to the situations that make your motivation wane.

Motivation has been studied and discussed for decades, but myths about motivation persist. In this section, we fill you in on some of the most common of these myths and explain why they’re just not true. When you know what motivation is and isn’t, you’ll be better able to reach your full potential as an athlete, using motivation as a tool.