What's Your One a Day?
By Colette A. Harris
In today’s fast-paced, Instagrammable world where everyone is putting their best “image” online, it’s easy to think that success happens overnight. Truth is, there is no such thing as instant success, even if social media makes it seem that way.
Those who have accomplished their goals started their journey with a single step. Then they took another step. Then another and another until the ball started rolling and their dreams turned into reality.
One step a day, one practice at a time is how any athlete masters a new skill. It’s not easy to put in the work on a daily basis but if you do, that’s when you’ll see the best results. To keep moving towards your goals, ask yourself: What is one thing you can do each day - one activity or action step you can take - to move towards creating lasting and positive change for your athletic career?
When athletes first start setting goals. I’ve noticed that they tend to set BIG goals. They want to go from a minimal training schedule to pushing themselves to the limit instantly; from eating gluten at every meal to not touching it even once; they want to rid performance anxiety within one show or competition. While it would be great to snap our fingers and immediately go from Point A to Z, it just doesn’t happen that way.
When you approach goals with that mindset and don't reach them, it can leave you feeling really down and discouraged. Whenever I hear athletes get frustrated about not progressing fast enough towards their goals, I can’t help but want to say, “You’re not being fair to yourself! Change doesn’t happen overnight!"
Learning how to set reasonable and achievable goals takes time, but doing so can make a huge difference in how you view yourself and your accomplishments. For many athletes, summer is a time to reevaluate their training plans and set new goals for the upcoming season. Now is a great time to try a new approach to goal setting.
First, start with your end goal in mind. What do you want to accomplish by the end of season? What are your big goals for the upcoming year? Once you have those established, focus on discovering one thing you can do everyday to move you closer to your goals by creating a "one a day" worksheet. Put your big goal at the top of the worksheet and then list all of the things you need to do to accomplish that goal. Each day, pick one task from the list to complete. You can choose any item and work on it at any time. The only rule is that you have to do something every day to move forward with what you want to accomplish.
We can’t know for sure what’s going to happen when we start chasing a specific goal or whether or not we will be able to achieve it. All we can know is that we are making the best decision in the moment. If we take one moment every day to work towards what we want, we will start to see results.
Remember that it's okay to start small! With each step you take your confidence will grow. Soon you’ll take bigger steps, until one day, you won’t fear your goals at all. Rather you will welcome the opportunity to step into your light.
Be clear about your goals and create an action plan to get there.
Remember, big journeys begin with a single step. Take one step today.
Photo credit: Photo by Yukie Emiko on Unsplash
