Goals and are important to everyone, including children. In fact, you have to set new goals all the time to move in a particular direction. As a baseball coach (or parent), you must also help your youth learn how to set goals that are meaningful and implement plans to help them meet these goals throughout the year. How is it done? We’ll see.

Without goals we will achieve nothing. I tell my teams that “Goals are dreams with feet and direction.”

Dreams become goals when we write them down and make plans to achieve them.

Here are some ideas to help you keep your commitments this year:

  • Set goals for shorter time periods, like thirty days.
  • Re-evaluate at the end of thirty days and make any necessary adjustments.
  • Add new ones every week or at least once a month.
  • Set short-term (daily) goals that can be accomplished by the end of the day.
  • Keep a schedule of your activities. Write them down and prioritize them.
  • Have a plan of attack to achieve your goals.

For example:

I plan to lose ten pounds in the next 30 days. To accomplish this, I will walk two miles twice a day to lose one pound every three days.

I would like to appreciate others more. To accomplish this, I plan to write a thank you note or send a thank you email to one person every day.

Achieving a goal is easier when you break it down into a shorter time segment.

As a coach, I have short and long term goals. We have goals for our team to achieve this season, but they fall into three parts:

  • preseason
  • mid season
  • postseason

(We even account for this in the way we schedule early-season, mid-season, and late-season games)

In addition to the season goals, we have longer-term goals for our program:
Goals of three (3) years, five (5) years and ten (10) years.

We also have goals for our parents (in building and expanding our program). Here’s how we built (and paid for) a players’ locker room, a two-story press box, and a 2,500-square-foot batting facility covered with lights.

If we don’t have goals to meet, then no one has a direction to GO. Without direction no one moves!

Would you run a race with no idea where the finish line is or how to get there? Coaches without resolutions for themselves, their team, and their parents won’t accomplish much, period.

Don’t Dream It, Do It: Baseball Goal Setting Part 2, Coming Soon to Ezine Articles.