Goal Setting vs. Goal Achieving

I realized recently that from the time I was in my early teens I was great at setting and achieving goals. Almost every goal I set out to achieve, I did. Some may argue with the level at which I achieved my goals but in looking back I believe I achieved my goals to a level that was definitely within an acceptable range of my original intent.

For example, although my original childhood goal was to be a major league baseball player, I realized at the tender age of 13 I didn’t have the talent to make it that far. Shortly after not making the cut at my 9th grade baseball team tryouts, I decided to do something else to stay close to the game, while also setting a goal to make the team my final three high school years (which I did becoming the first string varsity first baseman as a senior.)

In college, I earned a Masters’ Degree in Sports Administration and spent 20 years leading the front office of 5 different professional baseball franchises. Along the way I set goals. As an intern right out of college my first goal was to become a General Manager of my own team within 5 years. In my 5th season I had two offers from two different teams to choose from, and become Minor League Baseball's youngest GM at the time when I just 26 years old.

Recently, after coming to this realization that I had achieved many of the goals I set, I said to myself, “geez, if I knew then what I know now, I would definitely have set my sights even higher.”

When I’m out in the business world delivering my programs on creating ‘momentum’ in the workplace, and I begin to talk about achieving organizational or individual goals, I hear a lot of comments from people like this, “we’re great at setting goals, but…”

When the sentence trails off I know it means they’re not so great at achieving the goals they set. After four years of studying clients like this I’ve finally identified the problem with the achievement of goals. The problem is that very few people have a system in place for doing something with the goal after they’ve set it.

There are all sorts of programs out there telling you to visualize achieving your goal; and/or they tell you to do daily affirmations proclaiming the achievement of your desired end result. And, I believe those techniques and strategies work to a point, depending on the personality and the psychological make up of the individual. But there definitely seems to be a disconnect with many people between ‘setting the goal,’ and then being able to take consistent action towards the achievement of the goal.

Does this sound familiar?

All the goal setting in the world is useless unless there is a habit of ‘taking action’ associated with it. If you can relate to this challenge, I’d love to hear more about it, so I can help you, and others by creating strategies and programs to help breakthrough to being a ‘goal achiever’ in addition to being a great ‘goal setter.’ I have my own thoughts on how best to do this, which I'll share with you in future editions of 'Momentum...' but for now please send your goal setting/achieving challenge to:

MomentumChallenge@TheAchievementGym.com

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