What are we doing every day, to get better in every way?

I listened to a webinar this weekend by sports parenting expert David Benzel called “From Good to Great in Four Steps.” He has a link on the USA Swimming website to his webinars and website called “Growing Champions for Life.” I enjoy his material because it’s so well researched, he has real-life experiences to share, practical advice, plus several good resources of books to do further study.

Although the webinar focused on four ways we could help our kids achieve in sports and life, I listened to the talk through my own unique lens. Some of the areas Benzel hit on were Citius, Altius Fortius, the Olympic motto which means Faster, Higher, Stronger. Benzel pointed out that it doesn’t say, Fast, High, Strong—because we constantly want to get better.

It comes down to–what are we doing every single day to get better? That reminded me of a saying my mom and aunt often used: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” That is a famous positive affirmation by French psychologist and pharmacist Émile Coué, 1857-1926. His autosuggestion method has been met with positive acclaim as well as cynicism.

My own daughter has pointed out that I often have very negative self-talk. I’m sure her work as an athlete with the university team’s sports psychologists has educated her in the importance of positive self-talk. That’s something the entire team works on together. If we are continually doubting ourselves, or think we’re not good enough, then it should be no surprise that we’ll prove that negativity to be true.

I’m taking the four steps I learned about in the webinar to work on–not only my health and recovering from my injury–but in my daily writing, too. What are the four steps, you ask? Number one is to “dream big.” I won’t share my big dreams here today, but I do have them. Second, “aim accurately.” That is taking specific actions to reach goals that lead you on the path to the big dream. Goal setting is another way to look at it, but they need to be goals that lead you in the right direction. There can’t be too many of them either, or we can lose our focus. Third, use “visualization” as a tool to reach your dream. Many successful athletes and people generally in life spend years living in the movie inside their brain how it feels, smells, and sounds like when they finally reach their dream. Once it happens, it’s not foreign but feels familiar and right. The last of the four steps is “to believe” passionately in ourselves and our ability to make it to our big dream.

With those four steps in place, then every single day, we can improve in some small way to reach our dreams.

How do you approach your goals and life dreams?