excerpt from Mark Divine, US Navy SEAL and founder of SEALFIT
Set Goals the right wayYes, I know. Goal setting is mundane isn’t it? Come on Mark, you can do better than that. Have you reviewed yours today? Have you worked on the #1 thing today that is going to move you closer to your major goal tomorrow? What happens when your goals fail to be realistic? Do you have a method for checking it against reality? Are you tracking them?
Goal setting is a very powerful tool, and it is useless when done willy-nilly. Goal setting helps us to maintain a positive and forward momentum, a way to track our progress, and a way to focus our efforts on the important, rather than just the urgent, things.
Proper goals are stated in precise and positive terms. They are measurable and have a modest time frame associated with them. Too short and either they are not meaty enough, or you are setting yourself up for failure. Too long and you lose the urgency and they fall off the radar.
Goals must be achievable, in that you have the potential to accomplish them with the skills and resources available. Also they must be realistic, even if achievable, are they realistic for you to even go for it? I may be able to achieve a 400# deadlift someday, but it is not realistic a goal for me at my age to spend the time and injuries to achieve it.
When the going gets tough, goals take on a whole new level of importance. In Hell Week, we were not setting our sights on “being a Navy SEAL” or even “getting that trident.” Either of these is a SMART goal when I was preparing for BUD/s. But during Hell Week or any arduous situation, we require a different method.
In the tough spots I recommend to collapse your goal setting to the very near term. I call these “micro-goals.” The great thing about micro-goals is that they lead to “micro-victories.” You stack up enough micro-victories and pretty soon you have achieved a huge milestone!
Back to the Hell Week example. A terrible goal would be to “make it to Friday.” When you are in the depths of despair on Monday morning at 4am, colder than a surfer in Anchorage, sleep deprived and depressed, Friday seems a very, very long way away. A better goal would be to make it to sunrise. The sun has a remarkable ability to both warm you up, and cheer you up. Things suddenly don’t look as bad at 7am as they did at 4am. Micro Goal. Micro Victory. Next.
The hidden secret with micro-goal setting is that it forces our monkey mind to focus on what is happening right now, rather than what may happen in the future where it wishes to be. Focus on the next meal, the next event, or even the next footstep. These short and achievable goals help to enlist our monkey mind to be an ally versus enemy in our fight.
That’s it for this week folks. Next week we will continue our discussion of Staying in the Fight with a look at Positivity. I hope you find this helpful as you focus your efforts on your 5 Mountain journey.
Keep Positive!
As we discussed in our lastedition, the hidden secret with micro-goal setting is that it forces us into the present.Forcing our monkey mind topay attention to what is happening right now, rather than what it hopes to happen in the future or what happened in the past.Collapse your focus to the near present, suchas making it to the next yummy MRE meal or through that miserable evolution andyou achieve victory where it is at - right here, right now.
The wandering mind is the devils play ground.The nature of the outer,conscious mind (the 12% brain) is to dwell on the negative and obsess aboutit.Often that which is the obsessionbecomes the reality.Once you begin tofocus on the present, the requirement then is to keep your mind in a Positive State.
We call this Positivity.
Positivity can be likened to anelectrical charge.Are you positively charged, or negatively charged? How big of a difference would it make in your life if you learned to keep your mindand body positively charged all the time? My guess is a big difference.
Back to basics.Ensure that the mind is focused on the present and propelling us forward with Positive Self Talk.Positive Self Talk is akin to a battery that positively charges your energy, emotions and the very air around you; so that you attract the positive success you seek.At the basic level, it keeps you feeling good, strong and able to set a "positive example" for your teammates (who draw strength from you and vice versa. There are some nuances:
First, you must learn topay attention to your energy, whether it is positive or negative.At SEALFIT we use a simple question to draw focus to this:"what dog you are feeding?"This question refers to the two dogs we have in our outer mind vying for feeding:The dog of FEAR and the dog of COURAGE.
Our minds are energized witheither courage (positive) or fear (negative) which manifest their influence inour lives in different ways.Our basicemotional "feeling" states can be generalized into these two broad categories.We could actually replace "courage" with"love" but for this discussion courage is a more powerful descriptor.
Fear is the dominant energy in most because the outer monkey mind is generally negative in nature.It is constantly filled with negative programming from numerous sources - friends, family, news, TV, and our own self talk.By paying attention to what dog you are feeding, you will start to notice the patterns.
Next, as soon as you noticenegative patterns, you must use a pattern interrupt to immediately stop andre-direct them.At SEALFIT we use Power-statementsas pattern interrupts for this purpose.Power statements we use include some classics such as: "Hooyah,""Easy Day," "Get some," and "Aint Nothin but a thing."
These power statements interdict negative thinking andreplace it with a powerful and positive mood.
Finally, power statements are not enough to do the job alone.Ourbodies must also get in the game.A PowerPosture reinforces the power statement.Saying "I am going to crush this" while slouched in a defeated, fetal position just doesn't work!Yoursubconscious mind will call bull and continue to feed the negative pattern.You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and mirror the power statement with a power posture.
Often in the middle of a grueling workout, I or one of my coaches will shout power statement, coupled withpowerful gestures, when we notice the fear dog nipping at the trainees.Everyone's mental attitude and bodies respond immediately as if jolted by a bolt of positively charged electricity.It is great to watch and be part of. Soon we are all laughing and cranking away atthe workout, having left the worst behind us.We have learned to allow positive self-talk and powerful body postures tocondition our minds for positive outcomes.
One final comment about Positivity: the mind will easily slip in and out of negative situations basedupon external stimuli.You must trickyour conscious mind to remain positive by reciting Powerful Mantras.A mantra is simply a short statement that haspositive meaning to you.When I was in BUD/s, on long runs I would recite over and over "feeling good, looking good, ought to be in Hollywood!"Corny as heck butit worked...though the Hollywood part remains elusive.The power of positivity cannot beunderestimated and I highly recommend you start practicing these techniques nowif you are not already.
