Furey Athletics

10 Ways to Set Your Life Up to Achieve Your Dreams

Success doesn’t just come. A successful career as an athlete is a combination of preparation, teamwork, goal setting, and other steps to keep us motivated, accountable, and realistic along the way. Here are 10 steps that we at Furey Athletics believe are paramount to achieving our personal potential.”

1. Dream Out Loud
   • Put it in writing: Committing your goals in writing will create the tangible effect of “making them real.” 
   • Hang them on the wall: Put these goals in a place you will see them every day.
   • Look at them every day: More than just looking at them, commit them to memory. Know them inside and out.
   • Talk to people about them: If no one knows your goals  but you, it’s easier to abandon them. You won’t be letting anyone (but yourself) down. Let people know your plan. Let them help hold you accountable. Let them give you the internal and external support you need. 

2. Research
   • Understand what it takes to get there: Make sure you know what the realistic expectations are in order for you to achieve your dreams. 
   • How have people done it: The template for realizing your goals are there to follow. Study them. Reach out to them. 
   • How have people failed: What shortcomings have people experienced? How can you avoid those trappings?
   • How can you use your strengths to make it happen: Figure out what you can bring to the table that is distinctly your own and how you can use that to your advantage.

3. Priorities/ Values
   • You can’t be a hero to everyone and everything: Be realistic with your expectations and what you can control.
   • Make sure you prioritize your life to align with your personal values: There is exceptional value to remaining true to who you are in your personal and professional life. Assess and reassess these constantly and address how they align (or do not align).
   • Set expectations with those who are not your top priorities: Make sure you show the utmost value into the people who do matter in your journey.

4. Schedule/ Structure
   • Schedule your day/ week/ month / year to align with your goals and priorities: Ask yourself, “Where do I want to be by [date]?” Make a plan to get there.
   • First things first: But first understand you must set short-term goals that scaffold into the larger goals.
   • Understand the  commitment level that it will take to achieve your goals and set your schedule up to enable that: It’s important to recognize the challenges that will lead to the rewards.
   • The more you can hold yourself accountable to this schedule the more effective it will be: Schedule regular meetings with coaches, mentors, training partners, and others that will help keep you accountable.

5. Team
   • “Go fast alone, go far together” -Bill Gates: Surround yourself with people who share your values and goals.
   • Find the community of people who have achieved what you want and become a part of it: Reach out, ask questions, be bold, and believe you are a part of that community.
   • Don’t think you need to do this alone: Nothing is a solo endeavor. Nothing has ever been accomplished without the support and love of a team. Together, we make each other better.

6. Burn the Boats
   1. Do as Sparta did: When landing on shore and advancing into a new territory, warriors would burn their boats to demonstrate their commitment to their goal of advancement. They, quite literally, couldn’t go back.
   2. Make a commitment, it can be big or small, but make it stick: Always go forward.
   3. Identify sacrifices and leaps of faith you are willing to take without looking back: Weigh the real life costs of what you may have to leave behind as you advance toward what you want.

7. Courage
   • Don’t be afraid to fail and understand that being scared is part of the process: Embrace the uncertainties; Embrace the fact (and it is a fact) that you’ll stumble; Embrace the notion you’ll have to get up from the ground again and again. 
   • Step away from comfort: Your psyche is hard wired for safety. There will always be that voice inside questioning your judgment. Just laugh at it. 

8. Experiment
   • Start small and experiment but take steps forward: You can’t write a book without typing those first words. Edit, revise, and try new things, but always with the end goal in mind. It’s not always a linear path.
   • Your commitment does not need to be astronomical: You can take baby steps forward and still end up where you want.
   • Find ways to make progress with the time and resources you have: Life has its way of throwing us off schedule. Be flexible, but make progress triumph over inconvenience. Show up every day.

9. Sleep
   • Nothing rewarding is quick and easy: If you have made a long term commitment, understand that it is a marathon not a sprint.
   • No rest for the weary: Periodize your effort, schedule in rest and recovery, and understand that you must be at your best to make steps forward. 
   • Rest will provide clarity: Your thoughts will be more clear and your brain will be ready to create novel ideas and make new connections when it is well rested.

10. Iterate
    • Reassess, reevaluate, and course correct: Constantly assess how successful (or unsuccessful) a workout was. What can be changed? Is it minor? Is it drastic? It’s okay to change the course you’re taking to your goal. 
    • You will likely not get it right on the first try: If goals were easy to achieve, they wouldn’t need to be goals. There’s no one way to your destination. 
    • Understand that iteration is part of the process: You’ll learn that you may need advice from column A and from column B. That is, blend the advice you are getting from your predecessors into what works for you.
    • Learn from your mistakes and others mistakes: The old adage is perhaps the truest of them all. There are no failures, just lessons. See failure as a step towards success