Big, Scary Goals

Setting goals is important to give yourself some direction and clarity on what your priorities need to be to achieve what you want in life. The old saying rings true: failing to plan is planning to fail. With the 2023 PWBA season starting soon, professional women have been setting goals and putting in the work to hopefully achieve them later this year. It’s the perfect time to discuss some best practices for setting goals, and to take a look at what a few PWBA bowlers are doing in this area, including myself.

As a strength and conditioning and nutrition coach, one of the first things I do with my one-on-one lifestyle coaching clients is hop on a call to go over their goals and create an action plan. I use a SMART goal system to make sure my clients’ goals are specific, meaningful, actionable, rewarding, and have a timeframe.

Specific: What do you want to achieve?

One of the common mistakes that I have seen in the goal-setting process is not making goals specific and measurable. I roll specific and measurable into the S in SMART, but I have also seen it done with the M standing for measurable. I like to use the M as meaningful, to list out your “whys” behind your goals—more on that part soon!

For example, people will often say, “My goal is to get in better shape!” But what does that mean to you? How will you know when you have met that goal? Maybe you want to look and feel a certain way, or set a personal best for a one-mile run, or lift a certain amount of weight. No one but you knows what “better shape” means to you. If the goal is too subjective and not objective, then you won’t truly know when you get ...