“My goal is to make it to the pros”

“The goal is to go Division 1 in college”

These are some general answers from athletes when I ask what their goal is, or how they will know they are succeeding in the athlete life.

“It means I have failed”

“I wasnt good enough”

These are then the responses when questioned about the potential failure to achieve those goals. Those answers are followed up with loss of self and identification of any successful parts of their athletic self. Either they achieve this goal, or they are considering themselves failures. Which in reality, is very black and white thinking, not only for these people but plenty of other athletes.

Picture a ladder, with the top bar being success and the very first bar front the ground is what the athlete would consider “failure”. Making that jump from the first bar to the last of a very long ladder, is nearly impossible. To challenge black and white thinking, and promote constant growth and success identification, we find those middle bars of the ladder.

What does success next week look like? Success in a month? In a year? This promotes the idea of being “one percent better every day”, which is also important when done the right way for an athlete.

What are your middle bars needed to get you to your big end goal?

Be sure to subscribe to the website, pass this along to your athletes in your life and let me know some of your answers! Keep a look pout for another post later in the week.

-Malique Taylor