Grant your process-oriented goals equal if not greater importance than outcome-oriented goals..
After a little down time around the holidays, it’s great to be back to the routine as we enter 2023. I hope you were fortunate enough to enjoy a safe and rejuvenating holiday season. If not, well, I’m sure you know that many others out there can relate, as the holidays can also be a difficult and stressful time.
As we move into the New Year, many people take this time to set goals for the year, or even to make New Year’s resolutions (do people do that anymore?). So, unsurprisingly, this too can be a rather fraught time for people. We may have a tendency to compare ourselves with others and/or to hold ourselves to unreasonable standards. Ultimately, these trappings can undercut the purpose of setting goals in the first place, imbuing the whole process with negative emotions.
Anyone who knows me knows I love and embrace the goal-setting process whatever time of year it is. I have had to learn the hard lessons around comparison and unreasonable standards myself (and have to re-learn them from time to time), but I have enough experience both personally and with the athletes I coach to make some observations about how to make sure the process makes a positive impact.
The main tool that I return to time and again, and encourage the athletes to use, is a pretty simple one, and one that you can employ for yourself: Grant your process-oriented goals equal if not greater importance than outcome-oriented goals.
If you are unfamiliar with these two types of goals, here’s a simplistic way of describing the difference: The outcome goal is the finish time or place, whereas the process goals are all the things that you can do to help yourself get there. More often than not, those process goals are within your control, whereas outcome goals are more strongly subject to external forces.
Once you have those process-oriented goals, know that they are not a finished product. Rather, it is useful to periodically return to them and see how they are serving you. Undoubtedly, you will not enjoy every single training session or other component of staying with your process goals, and you won’t be perfect in sticking with everything every day. However, processes become much more sustainable if you are finding some fulfillment in them. They may be challenging, but if your goals are in line with your aims in life, you will find meaning in the challenge. Your goals should nourish you and make you feel good, which will feed forward into providing greater motivation to continue on your path.
Chris Lundstrom is the head coach of Minnesota Distance Elite – formerly Team USA Minnesota – which includes some of the top distance runners in the USA, including Annie Frisbie, Dakota Lindwurm and Joel Reichow.
