This is a class given during COVID to help with goal setting while at home.

“Goal Setting in High Stress Environments.” As a disclaimer, stress is subjective. IT is different for everyone and is different as a matter of perspective. I selected this subject because of the current state of the world and how, while many may feel varied levels of stress, the foundational concepts of essence, desire, outcomes, and small achievements in regards to goal setting is objective and applies in all environments. To receive the full benefits of this class, you will need something to write on and with. Make sure to try and be in an undistracted environment. Other than that, be present. 

Find your Essence

For the first exercise. I want you to think. If there were three words that would define who you are principally, morally, and encompass your entire essence as a person. I want you to write them down. Mine are Family, Fitness, and Leadership. These three words would similarly be the ones that if anyone knew you, would be the ones they immediately would relate to you or in essence be the ones that eventually would be stamped on your headstone. Think hard about what encompasses you as a person, the very fabric of your daily thoughts, motivations, and has directed your life forever. These are those words. These are your essence. Take some time to conduct some critical thinking and to come up with our words. Go ahead and keep those and we will revisit. 

Our Desire

Now let's talk about something called, “motivation.” Motivation is by definition in the Merriam Webster Dictionary, “a motivating force, stimulus, or influence.” In large part, motivation is an emotional state. Emotions are temporary and therefore unreliable. Moving forward, I want to find something in your lives that is more than just an emotion. Something that is similar to those three words that develop your essence. 

I want you to think about what inspires you. I want you to think about what is in large part the reason why you get up in the morning to do what you do. What is it drives you regardless of your emotional state, day and or time. Inspiration is developed over time and through experience, these things that you think of are the very reason why you do what you do every day. My personal example is to make sure that I stay healthy enough to protect my wife and family everyday. Take some time to write down three things that inspire you.

Goals

Now let's move onto our goals. We have theoretically defined what makes up who we are, or the type of person we are. We have also defined what drives us and what keeps us moving. Now we have to find out where we want to go. Identifying our theoretical life map will help us to develop that focus we clearly learned is easily influenced in our first exercise. I want everyone to approach your goals very targeted and with laser focus. Identify 5 things that are very specific. These can be something for your career, your continued education, increasing your finances, for your family, can be artistic, developing your attitude, increasing physical performance, increasing pleasure etc. My personal goal is to be the 67kg Masters 40-45 Weightlifting World Champion. I want you to take some time to write down 5 things that are very specific. 

Now that we are done, I want you to label these goals as “outcomes.” These outcomes are going to occur as a result of smaller goals. These are overarching and endstates that are a result of achieving multiple similar but smaller goals. Why do we do this? Now we get to some meat and potatoes of the process. The key to achieving any outcome is the process and/or identifying, embracing, and achieving small wins. Let's talk more specific about this.

Small Achievements

The Marine Corps is known for its hellacious ability to break men. In January 2005, I attended the Marine Corps Officer Candidate School, better known as OCS in Quantico, Va. Ten weeks of being cold, wet, hungry, getting yelled at, and being entirely under scrutiny for everything from how I walked to how my breath smelled. Literally, the hardest Officer school in the world.

Every week had tested events posted on the wall, i.e. long hikes, obstacle course tests, weighted runs and everything that was going to be used to assess and evaluate my ability to potentially lead Marines in combat.  Every week there would be days that I did not know if I would be able to make it through. Every week was overwhelming, not to mention just the thought of the weeks coming. However, what I realized after OCS was that it was not about mentally wrapping my head around finishing OCS, the weeks training, or even the day. IT was about getting to the next meal. I knew that if I could get to the next meal, then I was that much closer to getting through the day. Sometimes when we look at goals, and now our outcomes, we tend to look at it holistically. Like the entire achievement without thinking about the steps, the process, and or things we need to do before accomplishing that feat. Getting to that next meal was a small win. Our next exercise and lesson is to understand the value of small goals and small wins. Teresa Amaibale from Harvard stated, “ the practice of recording our progress helps us appreciate our small wins which in turn boosts our sense of confidence. We can then leverage that competence toward subsequent, larger successes.

This is because any accomplishment, no matter how small, activates the reward circuitry in our brains. When this pathway is opened some key chemicals are released that give us a feeling of achievement and pride.

In particular, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released which energizes us and gives us a feel-good aura. This chemical enables us not only to get that sweet feeling of reward, but also to take action to move toward what triggered it’s release in the first place.

This is the very same substance that gets people hooked on gambling, nicotine and alcohol so what the people in the study had essentially created was an addiction to progress. How neat is that?

In essence, we must be able to see what meals we are going to get to to achieve our outcome. Three small goals for me to be World Champion are to conduct daily programming three days a week, maintain body weight at 149# or less without losing strength, and increase my split jerk to 300#. For this, please write down three small goals under each of your outcomes. Remember these are small goals. They are realistic and attainable but necessary to the success and ultimate reach of your outcome. 

Review

Please look at what you have written down. These are now tangible. Statistically, goals that are written down and more likely to occur because they are no longer a thought or visualization. They are a tangible figure. We have discussed the power of essence and how these three words identify who you are what it is that makes up your fabric. These are the foundations of not only how you do something but the style by which you do it. It is you and all of the idiosyncrasies that make up your individual techniques. Knowing this will help you develop your overall outcomes and goals. We have identified your desires which is the fuel that drives your ability to do anything in life. It is not temporary. It is permanently ingrained in you and is not something controlled by emotion but is the vary thing that curbs it. We have identified your overarching goals and/or outcomes. These are the mountains for which you wish to climb. They are fueled by your desire and the way you climb them is shaped by your essence. Lastly, we discussed how to achieve your outcomes by way of small wins. We have learned that through small wins we can sustain and increase the efficiency of our desires to achieve our outcomes. 

During this time where you can be overwhelmed with changes in your life and the world around you, it is imperative to make sure that you use what we have discussed and written down today to move forward and achieve what it is that you want. In our next session, we will discuss, “Mental Toughness in High Stress Environments.” This is meant to build on Goal Setting so that now that we have a proper plan on how to achieve and set our goals, we will be able to maintain a bulletproof mindset that allows us to follow through with our goals when everything around us is not going according to plan.