Dreaming About Being The Best? Here's How You Set Goals To Get There.
Dreaming About Being The Best? Here's How You Set Goals To Get There.
Dreaming about being the best is easy–but setting goals to get there? That’s hard. Taking the necessary steps to accomplish those goals is even harder. But it doesn’t have to be.
We’re all guilty of it—especially baseball players—finding ourselves dreaming of the day we drive in the winning run, get the ring, and get awarded the MVP trophy. I bet you have even imagined (or maybe actually practiced) your post-game on-field media interview. We get this far-off gaze in our eyes and dream of accomplishing these Big Hairy Audacious Goals (or BHAGS) that leadership guru Jim Collins taught, almost as if they are already a reality.
That far-out gaze you get and that sense of hope for the future aren’t goals. They’re dreams. I know that truth probably stings a little. But if you are confusing dreams with goals, you lie to yourself, and you will no doubt fail.
So, let’s get you on the right path to succeed so you can turn those midnight dreams into a reality using the same strategy mountain climbers use.
A mountain climber’s goal is not to climb a mountain. It is to climb the next three feet and then set a new goal.
Imagine for a moment you’re a mountain climber, looking up at the end goal–the summit–thousands of feet and dozens of hours away. It feels almost insurmountable. The higher you get, the more challenging the journey becomes—thinner air, a fatigued body, and a terrain that becomes more challenging with each step. The way to keep going is to focus on only the next three feet—what you can immediately control. Once you climb several 3-foot sections, you examine your progress to course correct. Then you do it all over again. You repeat these actions over and over until you reach the summit. Climbers are often surprised to reach the summit because they are so persistent and purposeful with their 3-foot goals that they lose sight of the big picture, which is a good thing. The big picture will come into view only when you devote focus to climbing 3 feet at a time.
Are you getting the point yet?
Take a similar outlook as the mountain climber to achieve your goals as a baseball player.
Remember, setting goals is easy, and the plethora of books, theories, and courses on every strategy imaginable leave us neither the space nor time to explore here. But I want to outline some basics of goal setting as a baseball player to give you a better understanding of what is required of you to get where you want to go.
Begin by focusing only on the goals that are 3 feet in front of you—what you can immediately control. These should be your goals—your only goals. For a baseball player, that means focusing on actually improving your fielding skill when you are working your drills, concentrating on perfect contact off the tee, and taking purposeful and intentional batting practice.
Pursuing a championship title is, of course, a worthy goal. But largely out of your control. The other team’s performance, injuries, officials, fans, weather, etc. All of it is out of your control. But what you have is the next 3 feet in front of you. So focus on that. Focus on what you can control in that moment.
The University of Notre Dame football team has a sign on the wall as players exit the locker room. It reads, “Play Like A Champion Today.” This is Notre Dame’s 3-foot reminder. Don’t worry about tomorrow, and no one cares what you did yesterday. Play like today is the championship. When they hit that sign, it serves as a reminder of how to approach today’s game only. In other words, it serves as a reminder of the dozens, if not hundreds, of 3-foot goals they have before them. Which starts and ends in 3 feet.
The big picture BHAG will take care of itself.
Start with just three feet, and as the day, week, month, and season wears on, you’ll look up and suddenly notice you’re playing for the trophy.
Reverse engineer your BHAG.
Don’t start at the beginning and work forward. Start at the end and work backward.
This means looking at what your grand dream is and creating a course of action you need to follow to achieve it. Let’s say it’s to win the championship game—looking at it from a hitter’s and pitcher’s perspective. To win a championship, you determine that you will need to lead your team in either hitting or pitching.
So, what are you going to do each day to perform each week to be the top hitter or pitcher?
Daily Goals lead to Weekly Performance Standards, which lead to monthly checkpoints.
Let’s start with breaking the season down into manageable and measurable sections.
- Dailies are the specific actions you are engaging in to improve. These are the 3-foot activities successful athletes obsess over—Tee work, Straight toss, Batting practice, Long Toss, PFP, Bull Pens, and even recovery activities. When you win the dailies, they are called microvictories.
- Weekly performance standards measure the effect your dailies have on performance. No one takes a trip that goes in a straight line–airplane flights, car rides, and even trips to the moon all require constant evaluation and course correction. This means: Did you get ten hits this week, or were you 60%+ in first-pitch strikes and lead-off hitter outs? If yes, then your daily 3-foot goals are working. If not, examine your dailies and change something (course correct).
- Monthly measurements are the big checkpoints. Here, we get to look back and close out last month, examining if you are headed to that BHAG and to open next month’s workload. These are called macro victories.
You can see how your daily actions that lead to micro victories (your 3-foot goals–the things you do to play like a champion) will, throughout the season, lead to the weekly successes and course corrections (performance standards) to the monthly checkpoints (macro victories) that lead to the success you lay in bed imagining (Dreams).
Consider adversity and count on change.
Your dailies (3-foot goals) need to take into consideration all things related to achieving your weekly performance standard:
- Who are you facing?
- Home or away?
- Hostile environment?
- As a hitter, are you being moved in the line-up?
- Are they pitching you differently?
- As a pitcher, are you being asked to move from starter to closer?
- Are you facing a big ball or small ball lineup this week?
The one thing you can always count on is change, especially in baseball. The lineup and rotation at the beginning of the year will never look the same at the end of the year. Change is inevitable.
Therefore, make sure your goals and performance standards take into account, as much as possible, your role needing to change.
As you apply these strategies, you should see your BHAG dreams reverse-engineer into achievable performance standards. But before you get started, here is a quick list of some critical do’s and don’ts as you begin to think about the goals you want to set.
The last and by far the most critical piece of the success equation.
The only opportunity you have to achieve your 3-foot goals is today. This is because today is the only thing you can control. You cannot go back and work yesterday, nor is there any extra credit for working hard yesterday. And you cannot assume you will get it in tomorrow. You cannot make up missed opportunities today. To quote Apollo Creed from Rocky III, “There is no tomorrow.”
Here’s how I want you to approach it. You only have from the time your eyes open in the morning to the time your eyes shut to accomplish your goals. Regardless of how you feel, what you did yesterday, or what you plan on doing tomorrow, you only have the time you are awake to move your 3 feet. If you skip it, working harder tomorrow doesn’t make up for it. If you had an epic workout yesterday, good for you. No one cares today.
This line of thinking is harsh but absolutely true. By the way, the truth is like poetry, and most people hate poetry.
Did you know I wrote a book? It’s called “BASS Barrel Accuracy and Swing Strength, The Path to Elite Level Hitting.”
To preview the book, use the link to get a chapter-by-chapter snapshot.
See ya on the field.
Coach Leo
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