Successful Goal setting for Muay Thai.
Wow, I have been so busy these last few weeks that I have only just got around to finishing this blog!
Just to re cap, in may last blog I wrote,
‘Let me explain a little more about what I mean when I say how successful you feel depends upon the goals you have set for yourself. Imagine being a British Champion at your favourite sport, Imagine being a Millionaire, Imagine loosing 10 pounds of body fat, Imagine having your own 5 bedroom house, or brand new BMW etc All pretty great achievements and I am sure that most people would feel pretty successful if they achieved any of those things. BUT what if you wanted to be World Champion and was ‘only’ a British Champion? You wanted to be a Billionaire, but was ‘only’ a millionaire, wanted to loose 15 pounds of fat and have 6 % bodyfat, but ‘only’lost 10 pounds, what if you wanted a 10 bed room mansion or a Ferrari etc? Now you might not feel so successful, because you hadn’t achieved what you wanted, even though by most standards you are.’
So how do we ‘feel’ successful all the time, do we lower our standards and set smaller goals? NO WAY! No, we still want BIG goals, the bigger the better. We also want to set high standards for ourselves, its the only way to grow.
BIG goals are what get you up in the morning, BIG goals get you excited and motivate you to greatness.
But when the going gets tough, big goals can just seem too far away and make the success that you have already had seem insignificant, as in the examples i give above.
So the secret is to have a Massive goal to get you excited and smaller more manageable goals along the way. I am sure that you have already heard this before, but later I am going to give you a few of my own ‘tricks’ that I use to keep myself motivated and on track.
Think of your journey to your big goal as just that a journey. If you were setting off on a journey, you need a few things. You need to know where you are and where you want to get to, and some type of directions or map.
On this journey where we are right now is very important so that we can figure out what we need to do to reach our goal. The directions or map will be our plan of action.
I won’t go into too much detail about all these things as that would be another article in its self. On the way to your big goal, we need to set some smaller goals or ‘milestones’ along the way. So if you wanted to do 100 press ups and you can do 10 now, your first goal might be to do 20 press ups. Your goal should have a time limit to it, to add urgency and get you motivated. There are a lot of write ups about S.M.A.R.T goals, that you can read up about, so I wont get into that now. What I want to discuss in this article is what to do when you reach these smaller goals. By the way, these things that I am about to share with you are all things that I have discovered by trial and error and done myself personally and passed on to my top students.
The first thing to do when you reach one of these smaller goal is to celebrate! Remember that this is a step nearer to your big goal and that it wasn’t so long ago that this was in the future and something that you didn’t have or couldn’t do. Sometimes we are so focused on our big goal that we miss these goals or don’t notice that we have achieved a goal and just carry on as normal. Make sure that you are constantly noticing when you are hitting these small goals. This keeps your motivation high.
Even though we are calling these goals small, the fact that they are goals, means that they are still out of our current reach. Every day as you are working to your goal, take every opportunity to remind yourself that you are moving closer to the goal.
If your Big goal is to one day be a Champion fighter, there are a lot of steps along the way. You have to have your first fight, before that you need to get fit and learn all the techniques needed to become a fighter. So every day that you get yourself down to the gym should be a time to pat yourself on the back and notice that you just took another step towards your goals. Affirmations are great for this. Affirmations are short positive phrases or sentences that you repeat to your self over and over again throughout the day. A famous one that I often use and always recommend to people is ‘every day in every way, I am getting better and better’ you can personalise it to your own goals ‘every day I am getting fitter and stronger’ ‘every day my kicks are getting stronger and faster’ ‘every day my punches are getting faster and harder’ Just keep repeating the affirmation, especially when you are training. So as you are on the pads or bags, keep repeating ‘every day my punches are getting faster and harder’ You will have a great workout.
Along the way, your goals may change or you may go off course, so review your situation and your goals regularly. Always look at where you are right now and where you want to be and then set or re set your plan to get you there.
Revisit the old you often. This is one of my favourites that I often ask students to do. Very often when we are ambitious moving forward, always looking at our goals in the future, it is sometimes easy to forget how far we have come. So go back and remember how you were or what you had before you started out on your journey. You may be surprised just how far you have come. Then take a minute to pat yourself on the back and celebrate this success. Notice how good it feels to have done so much. Notice how much better you feel compared to the old you, then use this to motivate your self to bigger and better things. If fitness is your goal, notice how much better you feel now than you did, then imagine how great you will feel in 6 months if you keep training hard. Really enjoy those feelings now, before it happens.
Visit the new you often. This is really important. Use visualization to imagine how you will feel when you reach your big goal. Notice what you will see, what you will hear and what you will feel when you have that success. This will really motivate you and also get your subconscious mind focused on achieving the goal.
Use other people to motivate yourself. Find someone who has already done what you want and study them. As Tony Robbins says ‘Success leaves clues’ act like they do and think like they do.
Also, and I know this sounds bad, but sometimes use other peoples failures to motivate yourself. When someone fails at something that you have already done, this can give you a boost as you notice how good you are, that you succeeded where they failed. You can also learn from their mistakes too. I hope that doesn’t sound too bad, but honestly it is something that I sometimes used to motivate myself.
Please try all these things and you will feel successful (because you are) no matter what stage of your journey you are at. Please let me know how you get on when you try them.