S1E44 - How to Start Taking Action on Your Biggest Goals with Our Host, Laura Wilkinson

Pursuit of Gold with Laura Wilkinson

The inspiration for today’s episode can be found in a team meeting that Laura’s coaches called recently. The meeting was all about goals, and included an exercise where each member shared their own goals with the others. Even with her years of experience, Laura still found this a little uncomfortable and even a bit intimidating, but also incredibly powerful and beneficial for herself and her teammates, and definitely important enough to share with listeners today. She starts this solo episode by highlighting the need to set big goals, and the value of writing down and sharing them. She recounts the role that healthy competitiveness plays in making teammates better, emphasizes the importance of being specific about goals, creating a plan involving both short and long term goals, and explaining the difference between goals and expectations. She finishes up by looking at the importance of having and knowing your ‘why’ and by reviewing today’s main takeaways for listeners. Blessed with wisdom gained through experience and reflection, Laura expands upon a key coaching strategy for elite athletes and eloquently translates it for athletes and non-athletes alike in this relatively brief but hugely impactful episode.

Episode Highlights:

• Setting a goal out of your reach
• Writing down and sharing your goals
• Employing healthy competitiveness to get better
• Being specific with goals and creating a plan to get there
• Setting short and long term goals
• The difference between goals and expectations
• Avoiding the ‘expectation trap’
• The importance of your ‘why’
• Takeaways from today

Quotes:

• “If you’re setting a goal that you know you can already achieve, it’s not a goal.”
• “If you share it with someone, you are 77% more likely to accomplish it.”
• “It’s now real because somebody else knows about it, and they can hold you accountable in a number of different ways.”
• “The better your teammate’s getting, that’s just going to push you to get better.”
• “It’s important to recognize that expectations tend to have very emotional roots and responses.”
• “At some point you’re not going to be able to keep up with that growing expectation because it’s not a tangible result.”
• “When you have purpose, you can become capable of so much more than you ever thought possible.”
• “You’ve got to start acting like you are the person who is going to achieve that goal.”
• “I grew as a person. I grew as an athlete.”
• “You are capable of doing great things.”

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