Focus on Small Steps

In achieving goals, it is easy and exciting to focus on the finality of you achieving your goal. In Sean Young’s Stick To It, issues tend to arise when a goal is not met quickly enough. Naturally, people tend to give up.  Dr. Young recommends focusing on small steps, and what you can do today, towards meeting your goals.  By focusing on what you can accomplish in a week, you give yourself a greater chance for success.  One week is short term, and it’s easier to focus on goals you can achieve in that time frame.

 

Let’s take for example, the goals of losing weight, focus on eating healthier and working out every day.  By framing it this way, you have tangible things you can do each day towards your goal.  When you complete one day, celebrate and congratulate yourself—then move on to the next day, and so on.  Your big goal will be achieved when you put enough days together, doing the right things.  In athletics you can have your athletes focus on just giving every drill they do, everything they’ve got.  Then progress into focusing on giving each play everything they have.  An average play in College and the NFL, last between 6 to 8 seconds. With this knowledge, a Coach can focus his team on giving all their effort for just 8 seconds at a time.  When a team is able to focus on just playing their best for 8 seconds, they do not focus on the end result and are totally present in the moment—causing them to give it their best on that play.  If every player on your team gives each play everything they’ve got, you are giving them their best chance at success.

 

The last step in this process is for us to take some time to reflect on what we’ve accomplished.  Dr. Young says that when we take time to just reflect on the step we’ve taken, a shot of dopamine is released by our brain—making us feel good about ourselves, and giving us the confidence we need that we can accomplish the next small step.

 

Dr. Young’s findings are based on scientific trials—not upon his personal opinion or personal development theories.  Let’s use this to our advantage when we are trying to achieve our goals.  Let’s just focus on today, and getting all the things we can do, done.  There are  six more steps to Dr. Young’s method, but I will share them one by one to keep it short.  He suggests trying one or more of his recommendations together to increase your chances of achieving your goals.  Stay tuned for the next step towards achieving your goal!

Authored by Donny Posted in Blog, Sports Performance Tagged as