The Process of Becoming Great (Pt. 1)
The great Blake Griffin once said, “You have to fall in love with the process of becoming great.”
What exactly does that mean? What does “great” look like for you when your goals for basketball might be different from mine?
Understanding and following through with the meaning of this quote can be the difference in a successful career or not – basketball or otherwise.
So let’s dive in to where the process begins – setting goals for basketball.
Where the Process Begins - Setting Goals for Basketball
Falling in love with the process goes hand in hand with not focusing on the results. This is an extremely important principle of becoming great. However, that does not mean we can’t have goals.
We need result-oriented goals to help us define the destination that we’re aiming for. We then need process-oriented goals to help focus on how we’re going to get there.
Think of it like a cross-country road trip:
You’re starting in Los Angeles. If you don’t first define your end destination (long term goal) as New York City, you might wake up in a couple of years and realize you’re in Alabama.
But you’re also not going to make it to NYC overnight; you’re going to have stops in Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska and so on throughout the way. Each day you need to make progress in your journey and have destination markers that measure this progress.
Lastly, waking up in Los Angeles saying you want to get to NYC, but staying in your living room with navigation on might help you feel like you are heading towards NYC, but it won’t do you any good in actually making any progress – you have to get in the car and drive.
When setting goals for basketball, once we know our destination, we can spend all of our attention, time and energy on how we’re driving there, what vehicle we’re taking and how fast we’re traveling. These are the process-oriented goals – the how.
Goals are the foundation and inspiration behind the process and without them, where would the journey lead? The key is to have SMART, long term, short term and weekly goals in order to have a complete picture of the journey – beginning to end.
Long Term (Result-Oriented) Goals for Basketball
Long term goals are your big dreams; in your mind, where does the process lead you? Is it the WNBA? WNBL? NBL1? D-League? WABL? League MVP? The Olympics?
Maybe your big dream is to simply play as long as you can, or maybe you don’t have any big dreams at all and you’re happy to be playing basketball and competing with all of your heart right where you’re at. That’s OK (and in some cases- incredibly special, but that conversation is for another article…)
What matters is that you’re honest with yourself and that your hustle matches your dream. In other words, if you have big dreams, but don’t have big hustle, don’t trick yourself into expecting big things.
And, to put it plainly, if you don’t have big dreams, you probably don’t have any reason to fall in love with the process of becoming great.
Becoming great is not for the faint of heart. You have to know that you want it. If you don’t, the slightest obstacle along your journey will keep you from it.
Short Term (Result-Oriented) Goals for Basketball
Short term goals are what you aspire to achieve within the year or season you’re in (whether that’s basketball season, the off season or a waiting season).
Based on your long term goals, what do you think you need to focus on improving this season?
Maybe it’s your shooting percentage; ball handling; finishing around the rim. It could even be as specific as finishing off two feet on the left hand side, or a certain aspect of your shooting form.
Maintaining your strengths should be a part of your short term goals as well.
Weekly (Process-Oriented) Goals for Basketball
Weekly goals are arguably the most important of these three goal-types; albeit, we can’t create our weekly goals without deriving them from the others.
The process you go through must point you to your results-oriented goals. The thing that makes weekly goals so important, however, is the execution.
Reaching our short term and long term goals would not be possible without weekly execution. And this is where having SMART goals is essential. Consider the example below:
S: SPECIFIC; Improve my jump shot by 10% by shooting 1000 shots per week.
M: MEASURABLE; I will compare my next season’s shooting percentage to last season’s shooting percentage and take 1000 shots/week.
A: ACHIEVABLE; If 1000 shots every week is not achievable for you, then certainly consider shifting your schedule. If that’s not possible, then shift your goal.* Something is always better than nothing.
R: RELEVANT; Is spinning the ball on your finger cool? Sure. Is practicing that going to make you a better basketball player? Definitely not. Let’s stick with improving your shot.
T: TIME-BOUND; I will achieve my goal by the end of the off-season and I will see improvement in my results during this season.
*Keep in mind that if you shift your weekly goal, there is always a ripple effect on the short term and long term goals.
**Also, consider breaking your weekly goals down into daily goals. This could help you stay on track with your goal of 1000 shots/week (ie. 500 shots 2 days/week or 250 shots 4 days/week).
If your short term goal is to have a better shooting percentage, you better have a plan on how to do that. How much you work on it is how much you’ll get out of it.
Falling in love with the process does include having the results-oriented goals in the back of our mind. Our focus, however, should be the process-oriented goals that we can tick off each day, knowing they will lead us to the result we really want – becoming great.
Find out what the process depends on in The Process of Becoming Great Part II…
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