22 Days To Sochi – how do you achieve your goals

Wow – only 22 days and a few hours until the Sochi Games get started. Hard to believe isn’t it? Does not seem like four years ago we were all celebrating the Vancouver Games!

It was great to see Scott & Tessa win their sixth straight National Figure Skating Championship over the past weekend. Their programs a looking great, if you have not seen them skate yet, be sure to watch them at the games – even if you think you are not a fan of figure skating, you will be in awe. Just trust me on that one.

Big shout out to Margaret Purdy and Michael Marinaro for their 5th place finish at the National Figure Skating Championships. That has earned them a berth in the Four Continents Skating Championship in Taiwan.

If you are reading this blog, you are well aware of what it takes to perform at that level. It takes years of planning, development and execution. I think we should apply those elements to all of our goals so here is a look at how I do it – maybe you want to give it a try.

The Three Simple Steps

Well? Did you set any goals at New Year’s? And how are those going so far?

Even if you didn’t set your goals at New Year, you must have something you are working toward – otherwise you are just wandering through life.

I have about a million goals (okay, maybe not a MILLION) but I have a lot. Some of them are going to take a lot of planning to achieve – like learning to play guitar. Some will pretty much be random chance like meeting Bono. Others – it is more just a matter of time like going to see a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

I think it is good to have a lot of goals – some you will nail and some might never happen. That is okay.

What I want to focus on today are the priority goals. For me those are business goals (because that is how I get the freedom to achieve so many of my other goals) and a few personal goals like learning play the guitar, learning to speak better French and deadlifting 225lbs.

If I tried to do all of these at once, I would have to quit my full time job and that is not likely to happen so here is my process.

I split my big business goals down into smaller ‘action steps’ and I pick 1-2 of the other personal goals to focus on at a time.

So right now I am focusing on playing guitar and deadlifting 225lbs. I have a goal to practice my guitar 4 hours per week for the next 60-days and to deadlift twice per week for the next 60-days.

Then I simply take the action.

For accountability I choose people who are chasing goals of themselves and who understand the commitment. I don’t get Paul as an accountability partner – he loves me no matter what so he is more likely to let me off the hook if I am not making it happen.