Читать книгу Sports Psychology For Dummies - Leif H. Smith - Страница 39

What’s the difference between a goal and a priority? A goal is an outcome around which you focus your attention — it’s the purpose toward which your efforts are directed. A priority, on the other hand, is a goal that is more important to you than other goals. Priorities are simply the goals that are most important to your success. All goals are important, but as an athlete, you need to set priorities to help shape your destiny. Which goals you’ve prioritized as most important will determine the magnitude of your success in your sport. Choose your priorities wisely — they’re critical to your success. It is important to remember that sometimes your priorities will involve setting certain goals in specific aspects of your sport development — such as a certain skill, a fitness area such as speed, or a mental area, such as learning to manage pressure and maintain poise more effectively.

For most athletes (professional and Olympic athletes use different timelines), one year or one season is the perfect timetable for long-term goals. Anything longer, and you risk losing focus and motivation.

Here are some examples of long-term goals:

 Be the starting goalie on the team.

 Improve my national recognition among college coaches.

 Become all-conference.

 Be one of the mentally toughest players in the state.

Dream big. Make your goals big! Search within yourself for what you want to happen in one year. Don’t place limits on yourself. Sure, you should be realistic (you aren’t going to get a college scholarship if you decide to play football your senior year and you haven’t played since the fourth grade), but too many people place limits on themselves before they even begin the goal-setting process. Limiting ourselves is probably one of the greatest human challenges we all make at times. And connected to this challenge is one of the greatest emotions that gets in the way — fear.