As counselors, we spend the majority of our time changing negative thinking into positive, beneficial thinking. Everybody can use more positivity in their lives, and we enjoy creating the opportunity for so many people to find more happiness, courage, and motivation within themselves. We fully understand that setting goals are vital, especially if you are looking to reach your full potential. We know from experience that one of the best ways to guarantee potential fulfillment is to set very competitive goals. We meet with many incredible athletes each week, and they each give us a fresh perspective of what goes on in the mind of an athlete during competition. The following goals that they set for themselves are extremely applicable to all people looking to improve their goal-setting process.
1. Unify Others
Plato once said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” You would naturally think that winning is the end-all-be-all of competition. However, the root of the word competition is “to mutually uplift.” Athletes are not only wanting to win, but that are wanting to reach and fulfill their potential. Through competition, athletes don’t only attain their own best heights, but they bring others on their team, and even those they compete against, to newer heights as well. We want to help you accomplish your athletic or competitive goals through sports psychology.
2. Getting Better
In therapy, you will confront your inner dragons, rewrite your past, and transform yourself into what you would like to become. The process of therapy is truly remarkable. It’s an unseen and unrecognized form of heroism. A lot of athletes are viewed as superheroes, and this puts a lot of pressure on them throughout their athletic careers. Setting goals to become a little bit better each day brings them closer to becoming what they want to be.
3. Focusing on Strengths
We find that people, especially athletes respond well to, and are encouraged by, positive motivation, focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses, the positive rather than the negative. Negative views tend to dominate when life feels difficult or overwhelming. Allowing individuals and families to see the strengths they forgot about or didn’t realize they had is motivating and reenergizing, and it sometimes takes an outside perspective to start that recognition. In sports, it is so important to regularly assess your strengths and make a list of what needs to improve.
We love to help athletes find success through our techniques. We focus on keeping their minds from the anxious past or future and live in a healthier present moment. Reducing the noise in their life helps them focus on the calm and quiet to help with anxiety during competitions or games. We also assist athletes in overcoming conflict within a team by teaching skills such as effective communication and how to avoid power struggles, as well as many other essential skills. These skills create a more powerful athlete and team.
