I will be a state champion. These are the words I had written and posted in my room as a high school senior. When I had downtime in class, I scribbled the sentence on notepads as a constant reminder of the goal I had set. The realm of athletics first introduced me to the power and necessity of goal setting. Luckily, school had always come fairly easy for me, but the sport of wrestling humbled me in ways I had not experienced in my young life. As a fourth grader, it forced me to learn new techniques and find value in improvement over winning. In middle and early high school, the sport demanded that I assess my strengths and weaknesses as the level of competition grew. After long-term improvement, my goal had evolved to winning an individual state title during my senior year. The words stood as a guide map, a constant reminder of the things I hoped to achieve and a measuring tool for whether I had pushed myself enough to make my goal a reality. I eventually fell short of my intended goal, but I carried the tools I gained from the sport throughout my life.
I stopped wrestling after high school, and I lost some of my drive as well. Every decision I made in high school revolved around the sport, and I felt directionless. Don’t get me wrong, I had an exceptional amount of fun throughout my college years, but there was something missing. I needed a target to zero in on, and my senior year I decided I would enlist in the military following graduation. When I let my closest friends know, they were shocked, but it made my goal real. I established what I wanted to accomplish, assessed my current standing, and began mapping out how I could progress toward achieving my new goal. I needed to get in shape so I developed a workout regimen. The military required large amounts of paperwork so I organized my personal affairs. The focus of my new goal allowed items to fall into place as I made my way to Great Lakes, Illinois, and Navy Boot Camp.
Each time we began a mission during my military career, there were clear objectives. At the most basic level, the objectives allowed us to determine whether the mission was successful or not. Did we meet the objectives? The goals of the mission also support a decentralized role of leadership in chaotic environments. If each member of the team knows the overall objectives, they can make decisions to achieve them, even without oversight. Finally, as Murphy’s Law states, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. The environment in which we work is not static. There is never a mission that goes exactly as planned. When outside factors change the current landscape, how do we adapt, and do we need to reassess our objectives?
The current COVID-19 pandemic has seemed like the ultimate Murphy’s Law for much of America. As we continue to self-isolate amid stay-at-home orders, new challenges arrive each day. Self-reflection and personal assessment are critical in the current time of stress and uncertainty. For those that already have clear goals, what changes must be made during this ‘new normal’ in order to ensure their success? If you don’t have clearly identified goals, try writing them out along with steps to work toward them. Finally, many of our goals may have changed during such a tumultuous time. During our military missions, our objectives immediately changed in the event of a casualty to providing care to a teammate. Similarly, we need to determine if our previous goals are still viable or important. While I don’t consider myself an expert in goal setting, I have been more successful and focused when I established clear goals. As COVID-19 changes the world around us, it can be easy to feel stagnant and lost. By setting goals, we develop a road map that we can progress upon, and step-by-step we move toward success, even in the face of a pandemic.