How To Set Goals Like An Olympic Champion

Virtually every Olympic athlete shares the same goal: winning the gold medal. But the interesting finding from research by sports psychologists is that the most motivated and successful athletes set goals in a very specific way that is far more precise and detailed than just setting one big goal.

The best news: we can all use the goal-setting strategies of elite athletes to achieve more motivation, success and self-improvement in our everyday lives.

Here's the most crucial principle: supplement the big, long-term goal with specific, challenging, near-term goals. Then focus more of your psychological effort and attention on those near-term goals.

An athlete who wakes up each day to focus only the gold medal (or the Super Bowl, or the World Series, etc.) will quickly become overwhelmed. Their motivation will wane. He or she will start to wonder: How can I get from here to there? Is this level of success really possible for me? As two experts on sports psychology, May and Veach, put it: "Repeated daily focusing on long-term goals is often counter-productive. The focus is too far into the future and prevents the athlete from completing the intermediate steps essential to ultimate success."

What happens when you focus on near-term goals? According to the research in the field of positive psychology (the scientific study of happy, successful people), lots of good stuff, including