Perspective on Goals...

Scott Schwab:

Recently I attended a meeting where the subject of discussion was goals. Though much was said about goals and the setting of goals, one thing really resonated that I wanted to pass on. "Goals are not so much about results, as they are about the performance." When we think about this small quote, what comes to your mind? For me I have always really pushed myself to get results and have placed less importance upon the performance aspect.

As I was listening it made sense that psychologically, we put unneeded pressure on ourselves, when all we focus on is the results. There are many reasons for this, but I have come up with a couple. #1 We cannot control the external forces or people who may make our goal a reality. #2 Most goals take time to accomplish and therefore require adjustments that we don't see when starting. #3 Intentions are always good, but we must fight the very goal setter (ourselves), for what we want most.

I am the type of person that believes that I create my own luck. I know this is somewhat comical to some and impossible to others, but I believe a good attitude and hard work will go a long way towards achievement. For example, I would like to lose x pounds by y date. If we look at the result of getting to our desired weight by the desired date, we are immediately putting pressure on ourselves that is not always good. Pressure can bring anxiety. One other thing that the sports psychologist was saying is that goal setting is the number one cause of anxiety for most individuals.

Setting goals for some is a nightmare. The reason being, is that we shoot so far past realistic. Our minds may want it, but our body cannot obtain it. This is when we introduce the concept of breaking our goals down and overall being more realistic. When setting a goal, we need to look at our desired results, but shift our focus to the performance. With our example, this would not be getting to the weight by a certain date, it would be more focused on the daily outcome of our efforts. If we desire to lose weight, we need to take it one day at a time and choose to eat the right things, get exercise, and avoid things that we know are not good for performance.

With that in mind, lets change the way our goal setting happens from here till the end of time. No more setting goals outside our reach, but focus on what we will do. This also plays in very well to our accountability measures. For us to have success, we need to focus on the performance of what we will do and also what we will avoid and then let our performance dictate our results.