How To Achieve Your Dream Goal
/Do you want to achieve your dream goal, but are tired of failing, feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start? This unconventional 3 step method will help you start your journey to achieving your dream!
1. What is your dream goal?
The biggest mistake I see people making is attaching their dream goal to a result, such as I will earn £100,000 a year by 31st December 2018.
This outcome-dependent goal places you in a vulnerable position as you can’t influence the result of the hard work you put in. However, you can influence your performance.
Simon Hartley, a sports psychologist who has spent over 20 years studying and working with world class individuals, teams, leaders and organisations, helped turn former British Olympic breaststroke swimmer Chris Cook’s career around when they worked out exactly what Chris’ dream goal was.
Chris’ dream goal wasn’t to be world champion for his event or win an Olympic gold medal. Surprising right?
His dream goal was to swim 100m in breaststroke as fast as he could. When Simon and Chris worked this out, Chris went from barely making it as a professional swimmer to becoming a double gold Olympic medalist and competed for England in the World and European Championships, and Commonwealth Games.
(Read my article on 5 Steps To Developing A Mindset For Success to find out the 5-step process to creating a mindset for success that will help you achieve your dream goal).
2. Do the things I’m doing now help me achieve my dream goal?
Now knowing what his dream goal was, Chris started asking new revolutionary questions: Does this thing I’m doing now help me swim the 100m in breaststroke faster?
Chris ended up ditching two thirds of his training and creating new strategies that enabled him to swim the 100m faster.
So ask yourself these questions:
What am I doing now that IS helping me to achieve my dream goal?
What am I doing now that is NOT helping me to achieve my dream goal?
What do I need to keep and what do I need to ditch?
What 20% of my actions are giving me 80% of my results?
3. What are the top 5 things you can do that will have the biggest impact on you achieving your dream goal?
Simon and Chris uncovered that he only needed to work on the following 5 things to achieve swimming 100m in breaststroke as fast as he could:
Fast start
Fast and efficient 50m swim
Quick turn around
Hold speed for 50m
Touch wall with both hands at the same time
For the rest of Chris’ career, this is all he and his team focused on and he became an unstoppable force.
What are your top 5 things?
Once you’ve written out your 5 things, score yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 for each one, with 10 being you’ve reached the best you can be and there’s no room for improvement and 1 being you have a long way to go.
(Read my article on 7 Steps To Setting Effective Goals That Improve Your Performance to discover how you can set the right goals that will help you take your top 5 things to the next level.)
Invest all of your time and energy relentlessly and consistently in getting to a 10/10 for each of your 5 things.
