Sports Motivation 101 means, keep your dreams alive!! Yes, many of us have frequently been told to keep our dreams alive, to envision what we want to achieve and imagine how those dreams would become reality one day. There is clearly no shortage of self-help books or motivational speakers voicing the importance of visualizing what we want to achieve by keeping our dreams alive. There is certainly a lot of truth to that. The wonderful talk given by Martin Luther King certainly provided inspiration and courage to thousands of people in pursue of equality. It is also true that it can become hope to an otherwise difficult situation.
What it is also true is that dreams without a firmed and specific course of action may well end up in hollow grounds. Just having dreams and rest our hopes in pure positivism may actually backfire. How many times have we set our dreams to achieve new goals during our New Year’s resolution, fantasized of lowering our golf handicap, improving our free shot percentage, or reducing of number of double faults only to realize that none of this ever became a reality? Inadvertently, we placed too much hope on reaching out for our dreams without necessarily putting a firmed executing plan.
It is ok to dream, but to make it a reality, one needs to pay closer attention to what it’s getting in the way of achieving those dreams. What usually happens is that our expectations are based on past experiences; if we succeeded in the past we will most likely feel more confident that we will succeed again. The opposite will most likely happen if we had a failing experience.
Hence, when we set to achieve our dreams pay close attention if the memory of prior setbacks may be interfering with our progress. To remain motivated, look thoroughly at your personal experiences, evaluate your options and keep moving forward.
To stay motivated, then practice the following steps:
1. Set doable goals and make sure you reward yourself;
2. Be flexible and kind to yourself if a goal is not achieved; make adjustments and go for it again.
3. Learning is a process, not a goal.