Most professional athletes set goals, but I’m going to convince you right now that setting targets is the way to go.

Now imagine, for a moment, a dartboard; right in the middle, you’ve got the bullseye, and then you’ve got the rings that go outside, even if you do this with an archery target, right?

The thing is, is that yes, that’s something for us to move toward.

It’s clarity, a direction; it’s a destination.

And so that’s important. However, a goal is very much black and white.

You either hit the goal, or you don’t.

Now, the risk in doing that is what if you got 95% of the way to that goal but didn’t hit it?

Well, by default, you could argue that you failed, right?

Now, what if, in fact, you achieved some amazing things?

You were faster, you were stronger, and you made better decisions.

Your mental game was strong, whatever it was, right?

Whatever factors brought you very close, you never crossed the finish line, but you were close to it.

There’s this negative vibe.

There’s this sense of coming up short, not accomplishing a goal.

Now that in of itself is not all that rewarding.

However, you succeeded.

In doing so many amazing things, and so this is where we invite, and I invite you to consider using the term targets and replace the term goals with targets.

And so a target is interesting because it invites.

A little bit more gentleness, for lack of a better term, where if you do get 95% close to that center of the bullseye, you still get points and credit.

It just invites a little bit more of the opportunity to reward yourself.

For coming super close and making gains, but maybe coming up a little bit short, but you’re not punishing yourself or giving, sending yourself up for some feelings of failure or lack of accomplishment when that’s not true.

When in fact, you actually did achieve some greatness.

You set some specific areas you wanted to improve, and maybe you improved in almost all of them, but you just came up 5%.

That’s okay.

And not only that, but a target can move.

So it’s not just whether you hit it or not or how close you are to the bullseye, but a target can move.

And so it’s also important to have targets that maybe one day, um, let’s say on a Monday, uh, if you compete at all weekend.

You have some target that might need to shift or move a little bit on a Monday if it’s a recovery versus a day where maybe you’ve had a hundred percent recovery.

Um, and so targets need to be movable.

They need to be malleable, and they need to be achievable. Um, but they also need to be recognized for the fact that, yes, we want to get to the center of that target.

Yes, we want to hit it, but let’s be a little more gentle with ourselves when we may come up short.

Thanks so much for listening in, and I appreciate your time.

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My name is Dr.Jay Cavanaugh.

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