Persist with your Goals Like an Olympic Athlete

Persist with your goals like an Olympic athlete

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.  – Bill Bradley

That was the theme of the Peopleconnexion quarterly catch-up, a time where the global team comes together to reflect on our quarterly wins and refocus on our goals.

As a company, we set some fairly big goals at the start of the year, so being at the midway point of 2021, it’s important the team is still motivated and focused on the goals in front of them. Often in life, the difference between those who are constantly achieving goals and those who do not will hinge on the ability to stick to a task in a consistent and persistent manner.

We invited Anne Poole a highly experienced HR Consultant and expert communicator with over 20 years of experience within the Australian and global resources sector to speak about the idea of winning goals through persistence. When approaching our big hairy audacious goals? (= ?BHAGs?), which often seem overwhelming, Anne suggested we put ourselves in the shoes of an athlete.

When you think about Olympians, they have a goal of going to the Olympics, but achieving the goal doesn’t happen overnight. From the point of deciding their goal is to go to the Olympics, an athlete has to make a lot of other decisions and navigate a lot of smaller goals, for the bigger goal to become a reality. For example, to be successful an athlete needs to consider factors like their diet, their mindset, their equipment, their support network. Undoubtedly along the way to reaching that big goal of attending the Olympics, they will also face hurdles and setbacks, so they have to be willing to revisit their goal and make changes as necessary. So, the moral of the anecdote is whether it’s four years, four months, or four days, persist through the smaller steps as they will ultimately enable you to achieve that bigger goal.

This mindset can be applied to any goal ? from qualifying for the Olympics to delivering a project at work. So, taking Anne’s advice, we used the quarterly review to refocus our attention to the smaller parts that make up those big goals. It’s an incredible focusing mechanism that keeps you in the present, even during the pursuit of distant goals. Also, smaller goals create daily opportunities for little victories, which help sustain the motivation required to accomplish long-term goals.

Anne’s final piece of wisdom, when faced with these big foreboding goals, it’s important to move perfectionism aside and take that first step. Take massive [imperfect] action and give yourself permission to move forward, the rest will follow.


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