How to get better and achieve goals
Wanting to be better and wanting to get better are two VERY different things. Wanting to be better equates a wish. We when we say we want to be better at something, we add it to our list. We lament that we aren’t better, and we just waste our energy being upset that we just aren’t good enough. It also allows us to stay who we are, because there is no requirement that we do anything to change, improve or grow.
Instead, we need to change our mindset from wanting to be better to wanting to get better. Getting better at something—anything—requires (hard) work, dedication and discipline. For example, the California Angels counsel their young players just entering their system about the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. In essence, the pain of discipline is doing the hard work now, making sacrifices (the right ones) to achieve your goals. Compare that with the pain of disappointment, failure, because you didn’t do what was necessary to succeed.
Yes, there is a chance that you will go through the pain of discipline, do all the work and still not achieve your goals. Ask every athlete who doesn’t win the championship. Every employee who doesn’t get the promotion. Every founder who doesn’t get funding.
When you don’t achieve your goals, what comes next—what you do next—is what matters. When you reflect on why you fell short in what you set out to do, why was it? If you put in the work, did you improve? Was someone else just better? Did you cut corners? What are you going to start doing, stop doing, keep doing and do differently to get you closer to your goal the next time?
But make no mistake, when you put in the work, you will, in fact, be better because you chose to get better.
“If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything,” writes Carol Dweck in Mindset. “Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.”
Stop simply wishing you were better at something and start putting in the work to get you there.