Setting goals is what helps to give purpose to what we are doing. Whether it is improving our financial status, starting a family or winning a title, goals are what motivate us to get to where we want to be.

Our job as coaches is to help athletes achieve success, and it starts with goal setting.

Lenny Wiersma, a sport psychology professor at California State University, Fullerton, compares participating in a sport to driving a car: "You wouldn't ever just get in a car and start driving without some sort of purpose or direction. The destination has to be clear before you even get in the car."

Whether coerced by a coach or a parent, it is important for athletes to write a goal they want to achieve and to which they feel connected.

"The presence of a goal makes our pursuit very purposeful," Wiersma said. "It is very rare — or maybe never has happened — where an athlete or even businessman has become successful by accident."

Principles of goal setting

Jim Taylor and Greg Wilson, authors of the book "Applying Sport Psychology," came up with 10 principles of setting goals. Following these 10 principles will enable athletes to find the right goal to fit within their needs, wants and/or desires:

1. Set specific goals. Setting a specific goal for yourself will help to give you specific, measurable direction rather than a goal of "just trying my hardest."

2. Set realistic yet challenging goals. Don't set a goal that is easily attainable and can be achieved without much effort. At the same time, do not set a goal that unrealistic.

3. Set long-term and short-term goals. Short-term goals are important and will help to focus you on the immediate future. From there, set long-term goals that will help to keep you focused and wanting to achieve more.

4. Set competition and training goals. Sometimes, in order to achieve a goal in a competition, you need to set goals for yourself in practice. For example, a swimmer may choose to focus on having perfect turns in practice in order to have perfect turns in a race.

5. Write your goals down. Just coming up with a goal is sometimes not enough. Writing your goal down and putting it in a specific place where you can see it and read it every day is a powerful component to helping you attain a goal.

6. Develop goal achievement strategies. Once you have set your goals, you need to set a plan of action of how you are going to achieve them. For example, attending all practices, or having an appropriate nutritional regimen you follow.

7. Prioritize process, performance and outcome goals. By emphasizing the importance of process goals and performance goals rather than the outcome goals, you can actually improve your chances of attaining the desired outcome.

8. Set individual and team goals. While it is important to set individual goals for yourself it is just as important to set goals for a team that you are a part of and contribute to.

9. Provide support for goals. Having a supportive unit around you when you are trying to achieve a goal can be helpful. Anyone from your coach, to your family or even your friends and teammates can be a part of your supportive unit.

10. Positive feedback. Receiving feedback on your goals or even your efforts to achieve your goals can be crucial in trying to attain a desired outcome.

How to set a goal

"Goal setting is a complex process that is used by many coaches and athletes, but is also frequently misused," Taylor and Wilson note. "Ineffective application of goal setting often results from incomplete knowledge of the essential components of goal setting and how it is used with athletes. The value of goal setting depends on how well applied consultants, coaches and athletes grasp the intricacies of goal setting and its relationship to sport performance."

In writing a goal, I suggest the following steps:

1. Educate the athlete. Not all athletes understand or have the knowledge base that it takes to create appropriate goals. One of the most popular goals you hear from young athletes is "I want to go to the Olympics." As coaches, we should never tell an athletes their dreams won't come true, but instead give them the knowledge of what it will require for them to reach their goals.

2. Create a mission statement. Claiming "I want to do my best" is not a clearly defined goal. When writing a goal, there needs to be a measurable component — there is no room for generalities. Statements like "I want to drop 5 seconds off my time" are specific and have a clearly defined means of measure. Once a mission statement is finalized, it should be written down and placed where it can be seen on a regular basis as a constant reminder.

3. Identify performance goals. Set performance goals rather than outcome goals. For example, a football player may state "I want to win the game." But this statement relies not only on himself, but also all the players on his team and the opposing team. Instead, the football player should focus more on a goal such as "I don't want to throw any interceptions." This type of goal allows the athlete to focus on what he has control over rather than leaving his fate up to someone else or even a group of other athletes.

4. Plan a strategy. What are the steps you plan on taking to reach those goals? How many practices do you plan on attending per week? Are you going to follow a nutritional guide? Along with your sport-specific practices, are you going to lift weights? Depending on the goals you set for yourself, the amount of time and dedication will vary. Whatever your goal is, there should be a detailed plan on how you intend on achieving those goals.

5. Evaluate the goals. As a final step, athletes and coaches need to evaluate their goals and the path they took to get to them. Whether or not you achieved your goal, you should ask these types of questions: What worked, and what didn't work? Was there anything that could have or should have been done differently? What is my next goal, and where do I go from here?