Do This When Setting Athlete Goals

Summary

• Athlete goals and parent goals are NOT the same.
• Start with dreams that are big and almost unrealistic. Because who is to say what your kid is truly capable of.
• While creating athletic goals, have your kid create goals that are not sports-related. I call this the On and Off the field goals.
• Write down both goals as if you are writing a movie script. Someone should be able to read your kid's goals and make a movie out of it. Include the smell of the grass, the noise from the crowd, etc.
• Remember to add the struggles and how they overcame those moments. This is important that they’re aware that it won’t always be easy.
• After these dream goals are done, then put together S.M.A.R.T. goals. I don’t like to start with S.M.A.R.T. goals because they are limited to what is capable.
• Remind your athlete that these goals that are written should be reviewed every 6-12 months. Things change over time and the path or plan to achieve their goals may change.

Full Transcript

We're going to be goal setting for your athlete. This is part one of two, because we're going to be goal setting for parents later. Remember, your athlete goals and your parent goals are not the same. My name is David Sabi. I'm here with Kid to Athlete, to help parents raise happy, healthy, high performing athletes. So we're going to go over two things, dreams and movie scripts, and how you can use those to set goals for your athlete.

 So let's start off with dreams. You want your athlete to dream, and dream big, and dream on. You want to encourage them to dream so big, it could almost be unrealistic, and it's going to be unrealistic today. If they have this as their dream from early on, they can chip away at it to make it a more realistic goal. But right now what we're looking at doing is creating a dream that's big enough that they can strive for, they can reach, and so do not limit their dream. Pulling out those big dreams, right? If your kid wants to be a baseball player, do you want to be in the major leagues? Do you want to be in the World Series? Do you want to win the World Series? So there's a lot of things you can do to help them dream and dream bigger, and then remind your athlete that they're not going to be on the field 24/7, or on the court, or in the pool.

 What do they want to do off the field? So if they want to, let's say they want to be an engineer. Okay, to do what? Oh, to build a rocket. So you can do what? So you can go to outer space. Great, we've got a goal here. We want to be a World Series winning, rocket building astronaut. It sounds like a good goal. The goals may be unrealistic and that may just be today. Don't worry about that right now, because what we'll do is we'll set up smart goals, which means specific, measurable, achievable, and time-based. These smart goals will be more realistic, but they will be limited to what you can actually achieve. We're looking at things that you cannot achieve. So that's why the dream, that's why you want to go big and dream above and beyond. After all that dreaming, then you can do the smart goals, but do not start with smart goals, because those are somewhat limiting.

 So once we've done our dreaming, then we're going to write it down, and we're going to do the movie script. You want to write down your dream as if it's already happened, but you also want to write it down with feelings, with emotions. You want details in there. I want it so well written with detail that you can give it to Spielberg or J.J. Abrams and he can look at it and go, "I can make a movie off of this." So let's go back to your baseball player in the World Series. You're writing down like it's happened, like you're recounting walking up to the plate. When you walked up to the plate, was it dark? Was it sunny? Was it cold? Could you feel the cold? Was the crowd going crazy? Could you even hear the crowd? Were you nervous? Just really find that detail and really get in there and have them write it down, because just picturing it to the point where you can feel it, like it's already been done, is probably the most important part.

 With a good story, there's always some sort of struggle. Allow your athlete to think of those struggles and how they overcame them. Because again, same thing, you want the feelings and emotions involved. You want it as if it's happened, because life is like that, right? You're going to come up against hard times, and if you already felt it and you know how the story goes, you know that there's going to be an obstacle. You know that you have to kind of dig in, push through it, you are more likely to overcome it. So have them in their goals, also when they're writing their movie script, to put down those struggles and then overcoming it. It takes work, and they need to know that from the get go.

 So those are the only two things I have for you for today. We will go over maybe some more goal setting tips for your athlete later, but don't miss out on part two for parent goals, because again, athlete goals and parent goals are not the same. But for now, dream on and write it down in a movie script, and your athlete should be on a good start, if you want to help your kid develop into a happy, healthy, high-performing athlete. Hey, thanks for watching. Give this video a thumbs up if you like it. Hit that subscribe button, and if anything, please leave a comment. Let me know what you think and maybe what you're looking at learning, and hopefully I can do another video on that. Other than that, take care.