Golf is a movement towards a goal

When I begin discussing goals in our Mind Advantage workouts , most of the participants start with a belief that the goal in Golf is obvious. For some people this is true, though are the goals really that obvious? So I ask everyone to write down their top three golfing goals and back come a range of responses.

Most people also add a qualifying statement – such as “it depends on who I’m playing with”, or “it depends on the course” and so on. After a few moments discussing the many and various goals that people have in regard to their golf – it quickly becomes apparent that the goals are not so obvious after all.

Achieving our goals is a very fulfilling and satisfying achievement. Once achieved, a goal provides us with a sense of accomplishment and our confidence in ourselves grows.

It’s not just in golf either. Having clearly defined goals for yourself places you in the top 5% of the population in terms of having the highest probability of getting what you want from life.

A study in a US College several years ago aimed at finding out how many students had written goals and if this had had any direct influence on what they accomplished in their lives. The researchers asked students of a graduating class about their written goals and then followed up later in life to find out what had happened.

The study showed that a mere 3% of the graduating class had clearly defined and written goals. This is quite surprising but when the researchers followed up later in life they discovered something really quite astounding: Those who had written clearly defined goals were worth, in financial terms, as much as the remaining 97% combined! Let me just paraphrase that to make sure you understand. Those individuals who, at college graduation, had written their own clearly defined goals were 33 times financially better off than their peers who had not written their goals!

If this doesn’t fire you up I don’t know what will.

There are many other studies that causally link goal setting with successful achievement – from goal setting in the classroom to success in academic grades, from goal setting in career aspirations to successful achievement, from goal setting in business to success in business.

So what do you want in your golf? What do you want to achieve in your career? life?

If you have never established clearly defined goals for yourself, and written them down, you are not alone. What we will be doing in this session, is helping you translate your desires, your wants and wishes into written form and design an action plan to achieve them. Best of all – your goals are going to be fulfilled!

So why don’t most people achieve their goals. Well, not setting any to start with is a pretty sure fire route to not achieving them. Yet many people once set goals for themselves – many were encouraged at school, and thankfully, many more continue to do so now than before.

Essentially, like everything else we will be discussing here, it’s all in the mind. Frequently, when I ask participants on our programmes why they stopped setting goals, they reply that they ‘tried it’ but they didn’t succeed. And when hey continued with the activity and continued not to achieve the goals, after a while they ‘just sort of gave up’. You’ll realise of course, that if you do something repeatedly, and repeatedly get no success – your desire to continue with the activity diminishes rapidly. So, your mind does you a favour by not setting any more goals. That way, you won’t be disappointed and you can avoid the discomfort of not achieving them.

“I don’t like to get my hopes dashed.” “I can’t have my dreams shattered.” “I don’t want to be seen as a goal seeker.” “It’s too painful to not achieve them.” These are just some examples of ‘reasons’ we hear. So the safest, kindest thing to do to ourselves is stop setting goals. So we do. No goals=no pain.

“Goals don’t achieve anything!” Several participants have told me. And they are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! Goals and the setting of goals does NOTHING!
ACTING ON THEM does!

Why oh why don’t we act on our goals? Don’t fret, you are not alone if you haven’t acted on achieving your goals. So, what we need is a goal setting process that includes the action plan – this we will discuss in detail in the session on Outcome-based coaching. Before that, in the session on Motivation, we’ll add that essential ingredient to achievement as well.