A new year begins and, with it, all your good resolutions. How many times have you thought in the past about changing for the better in the new season, and how many times have you succeeded?<\/p>\n
Not always. I know. What can you do differently to turn new resolutions into a year of success and fulfillment?<\/p>\n
You need to shift your time horizon<\/strong>. Too often you worry about what you want to do tomorrow without really knowing where you are going and especially where you want to get to. The first step in planning well for the season is not to figure out how to start but to identify the goal.<\/p>\n Sports is exactly the same as every other aspect of our lives: to get results you first need a goal.<\/p>\n Goal planning is not a discovery of the last few years of counseling or coaching. Seneca, more than 2,000 years ago, had already taught us that “there is no favorable wind for the sailor who does not know where to go.”<\/p>\n Take a moment to reflect and figure out what your real goals (goal setting) are and what you want to achieve from the New Year.<\/p>\n Goal setting helps you understand what you need to do in the short and medium term to get there and, most importantly, it becomes a motivational lever that can influence and determine your behavior in a favorable way. Motivation is the one that makes you do the workout even on the day you don’t feel like it or that makes you finish the repetition when you think you can’t finish it. Motivation increases your level of discipline toward your commitments. And it is the one that will make the difference between success and the satisfaction of having achieved the goal or the disappointment of not having succeeded.<\/p>\n How do you choose a target? What characteristics must it have to help you find the right stimuli?<\/strong><\/p>\n The goal can be quantitative (running 10 km in less than 60′) or qualitative (learning to swim). The important thing is that it is clear and well-defined.<\/p>\n At the competitive level, the desired outcome can be a performance such as running a marathon in less than three hours or a ranking achievement such as finishing in the top three in your category in an IRONMAN. The former depends on you, your work and the support of your coach. To achieve the second, however, your efforts may not be enough because success also depends on what others do.<\/p>\n A goal cannot be random and cannot necessarily coincide with that of your friend or teammate. Part of my work lies in that. In helping you figure out what to do and where you can go based on your skills, your experience, and not least the time and energy you can devote to a project. Only if you find a consistent and attainable goal will you be able to individualize it by making it YOUR goal. Then you will have that inner leverage that will help you face each day, even the most difficult or least favorable ones. An externally imposed goal has less impact on your will.<\/p>\n An end result to be inspiring must be measurable. Nothing could be easier for you who measure yourself daily by the stopwatch. The measurability of a goal helps you know if you are going in the right direction during preparation. You will always be able to tell through tests or preparation competitions how close you are to your goal.<\/p>\n A measure is also objective. You must therefore be prepared to accept even failure. If and when it happens you will have to learn to live this moment as part of a formative process that should help us understand what went wrong and especially what we need to do to reverse this outcome. Therefore, the initial goal setting is already part of the outcome. Your goal must be difficult enough to be motivating but also within your grasp to avoid embarking on impossible missions. And remember that as I told you, the result depends not only on your skills but also on the time and energy you can put in. Personally, I do not consider it essential to achieve every goal. Very often success is the result of choosing simple goals. So many times I got excited about performance growth generated by a desire to achieve something that was then missed by a whisker. I get much less excited about the successes of those who did not put in the effort or did not need to pull out their 101% to get to the bottom. An ambitious goal is important for this reason. It must stimulate maximum commitment and emotional involvement. From an athlete, that’s all I can ask.<\/p>\n An ambitious goal takes time. Sometimes a lot. The availability of a very large time horizon to reach your goal does not always really help. A target far away in time unfortunately stimulates you much less than an upcoming event. That’s why it’s important to divide your time into a set number of deadlines and intermediate commitments that will help you stay focused at all times and with just the right amount of pressure that keeps you tethered and disciplined toward the path you are on. The right number of intermediate competitions helps you keep your attention level high and measure partial progress. For me, too, this is a useful step to periodically take stock of the situation and possibly retrain the end goal.<\/p>\n I am sure these brief pointers will be helpful in identifying the goal that will be able to motivate and inspire you. Individual motivation will increase your belief that you can reach the ultimate goal by ensuring you have the right amount of commitment and determination throughout the season.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\nGoal setting<\/h2>\n
INDIVIDUAL<\/h4>\n
MEASURABLE<\/h4>\n
THE TARGET LEVEL<\/h4>\n
TIME MANAGEMENT<\/h4>\n