Thinking of a New Year’s resolution? These professional athletes have advice

3 hours ago 1

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering the mental side of sports. Follow Peak here.

In a lot of ways, creating New Year’s resolutions mirrors the process athletes go through at the start of a season. Playoffs and championships are massive aspirations, and so is the task of improving from the previous year, every year. This leads most of them to creating — and sticking to — small, actionable steps to get there.

In other words, setting goals is a pro’s speciality.

So I called up three athletes who are particularly passionate about the subject: Alec Ingold, fullback and captain of the Miami Dolphins; Tamika Catchings, a WNBA Hall of Famer; and Devon Still, a former NFL player who earned his master’s in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Each of them had a unique perspective on the best way to set and stick to goals.

Alec Ingold’s advice: Signals, domino effects and buckets

Ingold’s journal has personalized “buckets” of goals that he creates at the start of every season: offseason goals, preseason goals, goals for the season and career goals.

Separating goals in this way makes them easier for him to digest. The only caveat is they must be objective.

Ingold focuses a lot on the difference between subjective goals and objective goals. Saying you want to get in great shape or want to be a consistent leader is subjective. It’s hard to look back and say, “I really nailed that.” For Ingold, objective, measurable goals — such as aiming for 10 percent body fat or studying his playbook for three hours — are actionable and controllable.

“I try to be as objective as possible with goals as well as creating different lengths of time,” he said. “I have goals for next month, I have goals for the next quarter of the year, and then I have yearlong goals.”

Next to all of his goals, he writes a few sentences describing what the goal means and why he wants to accomplish it, which he said helps him see how he can reach the goal more clearly. The what, why and how, Ingold said, are building blocks. And at the bottom of his goal sheet, he adds a purpose statement: a quick sentence or two explaining why the goals exist, the impact they will have on him and how they contribute to his values.

Then, during the grind of the offseason or season, he can consistently reflect on his purpose as needed.

He also uses what he calls signals to help maintain his mindset. For example, whenever he messes up, he claps his hands. It’s an auditory and physical reset for himself to snap him out of the moment.

“A bad snap or a bad 10 minutes can kind of stop right there,” he said, “and I can be present and not allow that to leak into a bad hour, turning into a bad day, turning into a bad week.”

He starts each day with three smaller and controllable goals that he can accomplish. Something as simple as making his bed or having a solid breakfast, he said, can lead to positive momentum for his bigger goals.

Tamika Catchings’ advice: One word and vision boards

For six or seven years now, Catchings has defined each year of her life with one word. The word is meant to encapsulate who she wants to be and what she wants to accomplish. Then, when she lists her goals for the year, she frames them all around that one word.

A few years ago, her word was “impact.” As she transitioned out of basketball, she had goals about the community impact she wanted to make and what she wanted her everyday interactions to be like. Last year was “focus.” For this year, she’s leaning toward “clarity.”

A single word simplifies Catchings’ aspirations into a clear, memorable anchor. It’s easy to recite and integrate into her daily life. To Catchings, it serves as a beacon, guiding her decisions and reminding her of her intention when her life gets overwhelming or busy.

To keep her excited throughout the year, she creates a vision board and hangs it in her closet, where she can see it each day. Her word for the year is in the center of the board, big and bold. Around the word are pictures, magazine and newspaper clippings and quotes, all tied to both her goals and her word of the year.

“You don’t know what you want and you don’t know where you’re going if you don’t see it,” Catchings said.

Devon Still’s advice: Contagious environments

Still said the No. 1 goal for the human brain is survival.

That is something he learned while getting his degree in applied positive psychology, which he calls the study of well-being and resilience. The brain, he said, is wired to help us survive by using as little energy as possible. So when we have habits, especially old habits, our brain wants us to stick to them because it doesn’t take a lot of energy.

Negative thinking does not take effort, he said, but thinking positively takes a lot.

The biggest issue Still has seen from those around him when it comes to New Year’s resolutions is quitting after the two-week mark, before the habit actually becomes a habit. But Still says there is a way to conquer this problem: Put yourself in an environment that supports your goals. He knows this from experience.

When Still first arrived at Penn State to play football, he surrounded himself with people who were “OK with just being average,” especially when it came to conditioning.

“I hated conditioning and I hated waking up at 5 in the morning and running, but I surrounded myself with people who also hated waking up at 5 and running,” Still said.

At every conditioning workout, he would stand next to that group and finish each set just in time, barely making the intervals.

One day, he decided to stand next to the players who were pushing themselves as hard as they could in the workouts. He cut his sprint time from 19 seconds to 14 seconds over the season by aligning himself with people who had similar goals and adopting their behavior.

He said you can apply that to every goal. Looking to lose weight? Having junk food in your kitchen — your environment — will have an impact.

“Our environment shapes a lot of the way that we approach life,” he said. “Our environment supports our goals. The problem with a lot of people is they rely on a lot of willpower in order to become resilient or reach their goals, when they really should be focused on creating an environment around them that supports their goals and supports the habits that they want to have.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Cincinnati Bengals, Miami Dolphins, Penn State Nittany Lions, Indiana Fever, NBA, College Football, WNBA, Sports Business, College Sports, Peak, Sports Leadership

2025 The Athletic Media Company

Read Entire Article