Hey everyone, I hope we’ve all had a great start of our week. Today I want to talk about two techniques that I have used, and continue to use, to help set goals, keep tabs on my routines and progress, and provide me with endless motivation. These two techniques are the use of a Goal Board and Journaling.
We’ll start with the Goal Board. Below you’ll see a picture of my Goal Board for when I was training and competing for an Olympic spot back in 2016. A Goal Board, or a Vision Board, is simply a visual that is created by you to represent whatever is important to you and your life. Mine was very specific, the entire board was dedicated to my swim goals.
These boards can be used in any and all aspects of life. Google search “vision boards” and you’ll see thousands of examples. People create Goal Boards for their career, family, socializing, money, relaxation, self-improvement, the list goes on and on. I’ve always loved this idea because once again, goals are pivotal to performance, they provide direction and intention for someone’s actions. These boards can be filled with long-term goals, process goals, motivating pictures or quotes, visuals that inspire, images or key words that promote happiness, they can use lots of color or be black and white, very neatly organized or insanely haphazard. The beauty of these boards is that it is yours, and you can make it however you want to make it.
Once it is completed, it should be placed somewhere where it will be constantly visible. I had mine hanging directly above my dresser. The first thing I’d see every morning and the last thing I’d see every night. The purpose is to constantly remind yourself of where you want to be and provide motivation and inspiration to continue the grind!
It is important to first have definitive goals before creating a Goal Board. I recommend everyone goes through the Goal Setting information and create the Goal Pyramid before creating their board. This information is on my website for Excel Athletes.
Creating the board should be a fun activity! Block off an hour or two, go to the craft store and get some markers, stencils, scissors, glue, etc. and enjoy looking up quotes and images that inspire you. Remember, goals that are kept in your head are just wishes. Once you write them down, they become tangible, a real thing. A Goal Board is an excellent resource to give yourself direction.
The second technique I will discuss is the use of Journaling. There are so many different ways to journal. For starters, there’s your classic “Dear Diary” journal entries. Some people love to write out their thoughts to get them out of their head, I’m all about it. While I can’t say I’ve “Dear Diary” journaled before, there are two other types of Journaling that I am a huge fan of. First, Workout Journaling. Excel Athletes that have gone through Performance Consultation with me know all about this. I encourage athletes to write down their workouts, and a number of additional things including what their process goals were, if they completed them or not, rate the workout, areas of success and improvement, comments from the coach, etc. For Excel Athletes, there is a link to Workout Journaling on my website. I won’t get into the specifics on why I believe this is such a valuable tool, but if you’re interested, contact me and we can get you involved in some Performance Consultation!
The second type I use has been very recent, I guess I refer to it as Planner Journaling. Recently I purchased a “Planner” through Project Evo (here is their website: https://projectevo.org/). Their goal is to create customized planners that helps each individual based on their brain type. I took a quick quiz online to determine my brain type: Alchemist, Oracle, Explorer and Architect (I was an Explorer). This is based on an intersection between the person’s levels of external vs. internal and abstract vs. concrete brain type.
I love this planner because it allows me to dive into my goals with even more direction and intention by helping me layout my day to be successful. Not only that but being an “Explorer,” they understand that I need to stay active, create fun and should recognize what I’m grateful for. This planner helps me account for those specifics to make sure my days are as productive and enjoyable as they can be. Trust me, with how busy I am I often overreach in my daily to-do list and ultimately end the day feeling unsuccessful. This planner does away with that feeling. It has month, weekly, and daily pages so I can stay on top of everything, every step of the way.
Lastly, this planner includes areas to review how the day/week/month went. I always push athletes to review past experiences because that is where we derive motivation from and identify future goals. Now, Project Evo isn’t paying me to plug in their planner, BUT I do recommend that everyone starts some sort of journaling! I’ve found it to help a lot, especially with how much information I try to just “keep in my head,” which we all know never happens as well as we want it to. Below is a picture of a normal day in the planner.
So, create a Goal Pyramid, find some inspirational pictures and quotes, hit a craft store, create a Goal Board, and start journaling your workouts and days. I bet you’ll find that you’ll start appreciating things greater, have an increased drive to achieve goals, and have more fun doing it. If you end up getting a journal or creating a board and don’t mind sharing it with me, I’d love to see what you’ve all created!
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