4 steps to achieving your goals in and outside of triathlon
/
The good news: You have a goal you want to achieve.
The bad news: You feel overwhelmed, scared of failing and don’t know where to start.
Luckily, this blog post is here to help you fast track your way to achieving your goal - whether it’s triathlon or non-triathlon based.
Let’s get to it.
STEP 1 | Define your goal
A goal is any one thing that will take you more than one physical action to achieve.
By ‘physical action’, I mean something you can 100% take a clear, single action on.
For example, ‘Organise summer holiday’ > becomes > talk with my wife on Thursday evening about where we want to go during August. This is a clear physical action.
I’m guessing you have more than one goal you want to achieve, you have many things whirring around in your mind, you feel overwhelmed, paralysed and have a fear of failure.
To cut through all of this, I want you to focus on just ONE goal.
What goal first comes to mind? Is there a goal you’re stuck with? Or one that’s important, but you just haven't put the time aside to make it happen?
Choose that goal and circle through steps 2-4 with it. You can then come back to Step 1 for your other goals.
STEP 2 | What’s the first step?
One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is:
What is the first SMALL step I need to take to move forward with my goal?
It must be a specific physical action as I mentioned above.
Here’s a few more examples:
Get promoted to head of department > Research for 1 hour on [insert date] what I need to add to my CV to become a very strong candidate for head of the department.
Qualify for Kona > Talk to my trainer on [insert date] about the exact things I need to do and achieve to qualify in my age group for Kona, and a realistic timeline.
Win my A race > With my coach on [insert date], define training targets for each month.
This is a powerful, productive step because it makes you focus on just the first small thing, which cancels out that fear of failure and overwhelm. Suddenly achieving the first step of your goal is easy and do-able.
Once you’ve completed this small step quickly and easily, it provides you with positive momentum, confidence motivation to complete the next small step.
Now you’re snowballing towards achieving your goal!
STEP 3 | What’s the sequence?
Stress, overwhelm, distraction, anxiety, procrastination etc. are often triggered when the steps to achieving your goal are unclear, missing, in the wrong order, too big, aren’t written down or/and aren’t scheduled for completion.
To stop these unhelpful thoughts and actions in their tracks, brainstorm everything you need to do to achieve your goal.
Next, break down each item into small, physical actions and put them into these lists:
Actions that take less than 2 minutes
Actions that take more than 2 minutes
Waiting on something or someone (e.g. email from Susan or package from Amazon)
Thirdly, the items that take less than 2 minutes, do it straight away or block out a chunk of time in which you can do all of them.
Finally, order the actions in lists 2 and 3 from what you need to complete first to last - and remember to track your progress.
[Find you're still procrastinating? Read my blog ‘8 ways to overcome procrastination for athletes’ to stop procrastinating and do something more useful instead]
Step 4 | Schedule it
As I mentioned in Step 3, do the things that will take less than 2 minutes straight away, or block out a chunk of time in your calendar during which you can complete all of them.
Any action that will take longer than 2 minutes to complete, schedule the time and date in your calendar.
If you’re waiting on something or someone, put a reminder in your calendar on when you should receive it and if you haven’t by that date, remember to follow up.
By completing steps 1 -4, you’ll not only increase your chances of achieving your goal, but you’ll also create headspace for creative and solution-focused thinking.
