Target Practice

Success is the achievement of something desired, planned or attempted and London 2012 has offered wonderful examples of athletes tasting success or falling dramatically short, irrespective of the final medal.

British athlete Tom Daley's bronze medal in the individual 10m platform dive gave the BBC3 a record 6.6 million viewers on Saturday night.  He made front page of The Sunday Times Olympic section, relegating Luke Campbell, the Gold medal winning boxer, to Page 6. The Guardian ran the headline -  'Tom Daley makes diving bronze seem like gold'. Tom Daley knew that, given the strength of the field and his own capabilities on that day, bronze was the greatest he could achieve.

Stark contrast to the reception for Rebecca Adlington's two bronze medals in the swimming pool, 'Rebecca Adlington beaten into bronze' - Guardian 3rd August, which has left her considering her swimming future. Rebecca was disappointed with her time having swum slower in her 800m final than she did in the British Olympic qualifiers.

We can learn a great deal from our athletes in terms of the value of setting realistic targets and judging our success against them.

How to determine your target? How do we know the extent of your potential?

Turn Up - To even begin to understand your true potential you need to turn up. Our athletes were not selected by luck.  They joined swimming clubs and cycling clubs, they worked hard,  tried a few different sports and eventually they settled on one that suited them.  Play around with the components of your life that you spend your time on. If you don't feel that you can meet your idea of high performance in your life as you currently lead it, think about trying something different that does play to your strengths.

Baseline - Understand your strengths and weaknesses across each of the components of your life. Which components do you naturally excel at? Which do you enjoy most? Which are just fixed time requirements and you need to simply minimise the downside?

Target - Set yourself an achievable goal. Go after it. Smash it. Chose another one. Keep pushing out your targets. You may come to the ceiling of one or many. Decide what to do about that.

Call for help - Identify the support that you need to reach your target.  If you are unable to get the support, reassess the feasibility of the target. The best coaches, partners and employers will provide this support seamlessly to maximise your potential.

Time horizon - Schedule your goals. You can achieve anything that you set your mind to, but not all at once. Consider your constraints and plan your aspirations around them and around the aspirations of those that you are close to.

Recognise Success -  If you reach your target, recognise it.

All too often we berate ourselves for underachievement of what was always an unrealistic target. Even more frequently we don't celebrate the successful attainment of a target which we might consider to be mediocre in comparison to others.

When you reach the target that you have set for yourself, think of Tom Daley. Celebrate, as if it were Olympic gold, then start training for Rio.