5 Tips for Strong Girl Goal Setting in 2024
The best advice from Downhiller Rachel Pageau + Ultra-runner Molly Hurford
It’s almost 2024 and we hope you’ve had a fantastic, relaxing holiday so far. Of course, at Strong Girl Publishing, we’re as excited about getting ready for 2024 as we are about binge-reading a new book… So grab a pen and paper (and your Strong Girl Publishing “Best Year Ever Annual Planner” from Rachel!) and prepare to set yourself up for your best, most goal-getting year ever!
Here we go… 5 Tips for Goal Setting in 2024 from Downhiller Rachel Pageau + Ultra-runner Molly Hurford
Set goals you can control
One mistake a lot of us athletes make is that we set goals that we can’t control, like winning a race. We can’t control the competitors around us, so it’s hard to know what to do with a big goal like that. Instead, focus on the goals you can control, like improving your hour-long power on the bike by 15 watts, or even fueling/hydrating properly during every ride. You may set a goal based on your racing, like improving your race start, since that’s something you can control through practice.
...But it’s good to have a big, scary goal too!
The downside of setting only goals that you know you can control? Sometimes they’re just not that inspiring and don’t really make you push outside of your comfort zone. If you’re always sitting 15th in race results, maybe your Big Scary Goal is a top 10 finish. If you’re always on the podium, maybe this is the year you want to take the overall win. This Big Scary Goal can also help you come up with great controllable goals that will get you there!
Make your goals visual
Whether you write them all down in your planner, create a vision board, write them on sticky notes or in lipstick on your bathroom mirror, or have a Google doc where you’ve listed them, make sure your goal is set in stone somewhere!
Revisit your goals often
We both recommend taking time at least once a month, if not every week (or even every morning!) to look through your big goals and smaller goals to assess where you are and what you need to work on next. If you only write your goals out at the end of the year and never look at them again, you’re less likely to make them happen.
Make a list of ‘challenges’
Rachel’s great tip to keep you excited all year is to make a list of a dozen or so mini-challenges that you can choose from each month. These could be things like drinking your entire Stanley flask of water every day, spending 10 minutes meditating or practicing your MTB skills in the backyard every day, or doing a yoga flow right when you wake up. At the start of every month, look over your list of challenges and pick the one that feels fun to you. By the end of the month, that challenge should feel more like a normal part of your day or week, and you’ll be ready to add something new (and maybe stick to that yoga session in the morning even after the month is over!).
Remember it’s not all about getting the exact goal
The funny part about goal setting, especially with those Big Scary Goals, is that at the end of the year, it’s not about whether or not you actually achieved that Big Scary Goal. It’s about whether or not you did the things you needed to do to become the kind of person who could have achieved that goal. If you wanted to win a cyclocross race, for instance, did you practice your starts with a few friends regularly, fuel and hydrate before every practice, do 10 sets of barrier hops every morning, practice your running, et cetera? If you accomplished those smaller, controllable goals we talked about at the start of this, then you’ve accomplished SO MUCH, whether or not you took home a trophy!
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