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Doc~1 FOOTBALL

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Abdul
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Psychology of Sidestepping Common Goal Setting Mistakes

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe,
and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success”-- Stephen A.
Brennan, Irish Professional Football Player

Life is all about moving forward with your career goals while still enjoying life along the way.
Wanting to better yourselves in a football mental game brings aspirations, dreams and takes you
down paths to accomplishment.

Discovering what you want to do in life can be an exciting prospect and you naturally become
eager to start setting your goals and planning on how you can achieve them. But there are some
fundamental mistakes that many athletes make when setting goals and, if you’re not aware of
these, they can bring a lot of challenges, frustrations and disappointments.

Having too many goals is one of the most common mistakes that many athletes do. Setting too
many goals will leave you less focused as you have too many things fighting for your attention.
When you start your goal setting process, you may find that you have a long list of things you
would like to achieve. The problem is that you will not be able to give any one item the attention
it deserves and you will end up jeopardizing your football confidence.

Your football minds actually work better when you are working on only one thing at a time.
“Less is more” should be your motto when setting your goals. Look through your list – you
might find that there is some double up and some goals have the same outcome. Once you have
your final list you need to identify the three most important goals. Look for the goals that will
have the greatest impact and start with these. Then go back to the list and pick the next three. By
the end of the year, you will have ticked off a large chunk of your long list.

Another common mistake athletes make is they don’t review their progress towards achieving
goals regularly enough. Too often you see people get to the second half of the year and panic
because they are way off track. Regularly reviewing your goals, say weekly or at the very least
monthly, enables you to quickly make adjustments if you are off track. One month into your
timetable you might find that only a small adjustment in effort or action is required to bring you
back into line with your target; however, if you get six or nine months into the process, the
cumulative effect of the shortfall may be too much to overcome.

People often give up on a goal without realizing how close they were to achieving success. As in
running, there will be times when you hit close to your target. Your football mental toughness
need to be strong enough to recognize this moment and push through it. The easy option is to
start looking for all the reasons why you should give up; however, this is the time when you need
to go back to your written goals and recall all the reasons WHY you should keep going. Once
you get over this hurdle, you will find things become easier, you regain your motivation and are
can give it that last push through to the finish line.

When you are experiencing a mental setback, putting your ego aside will help you figure out the
next chapter in your story. There are two types of goals orientation involved in making this
mental shift: Mastery orientation goals and ego orientation goals.
Ego oriented goals indicates that athletes measure success by not being the least skilled
individual and put more emphasis on winning as opposed to developing skill. Perceived low
ability in combination with a high ego goal orientation leads to maladaptive motivational pattern.

Mastery orientation goals suggests that you must be interested in mastering a skill or task. By
mastering certain skills of football psychology, you feel competent with your ability to perform
on the playing field. This also indicates that you are also intrinsically motivated and evaluate
success by effort and improvement.

Goal setting success is not just about putting a goal out there and hoping that the universe will
provide. It takes hard work and discipline. The good thing is that like anything, the more often
you set goals and work towards achieving them, the better you will become at it.

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