Mental Moment-NYR’s
I’ll bet you think I am a bit premature to be writing this. However if you are like me the phrase New Years Resolutions conjures up not so positive thoughts and feelings. It sounds a little old school particularly if you are an elite performer who is always resolving to do more or do better. Since there are numerous definitions of everything why don’t we redefine the way we think about New Years Resolutions (NYR’s).
Sense of failure
Let’s think outside the box and start thinking about this now versus waiting until January 1 and throwing a couple of things on a piece of paper. NYR’s provide 99% of people who set them a sense of failure because they aren’t successful. People pull them out of thin air, aren’t realistic, have way too many of them and then don’t have a process for reaching them. This year can be different.
New name
I do a lot of work with clients around challenging their perspective and opening them up to other perspectives.Your goals for the next year don’t even have to be called NYR’s. Instead of using NYR’s what other name could you use for a goal setting type process? What makes sense to you?
Procrastination
What if this year your NYR’s were 1 or 2 things you’ve always seem to procrastinate on (procrastination is usually fear based) or a couple of things that you want to be different and they were structured in a way that made sense? For example one thing people procrastinate on is utilizing mental strategies alongside their physical training. Hm! How would you begin adding mental strategies to your physical training? One of the best ways to structure this change is through goal setting. Goal setting should start at the inception of a goal/thought/idea. Maybe you don’t know a lot about what it means to use mental training and need to do a little bit more research. Maybe you are unsure of what holds you back and need some time to develop awareness. Everything can go into a goal setting format.
Fear
How do we get over our fear of moving forward on certain things? One way is by just doing it and seeing that generally our worst fears don’t come true (how many times have your worst fears ever come true?). Another way is to focus the small, incremental steps to getting there again starting with the very basics. Goal setting is that that process and is a good way to keep yourself motivated and focused. Goal setting benefits: improve performance, improve the quality of practice, clarify expectations, and relieves boredom, increases motivation, pride, satisfaction and improved self confidence.
During the next few blogs I will walk you step by step through a fairly simplistic goals setting process to help you begin to structure your new year.
This year set yourself up for success!
Happy Saturday!
Dr. Michelle
Photo credit: newyorker.com
