I am in Italy, riding up what Lance Armstrong considers the hardest ride you can do, Mortirolo from Mazzo (CLICK HERE FOR THE BIKE NERD INFO) (a really quaint little Italian town). The climb has an average gradient of 10.5% for 12.4 km with no real let up (and that means climbing solidly vertical for 1.5 hours) (CLICK HERE FOR MORE BIKE NERD INFO). With a climb straight up from 55 meters to 1852 metres and 38 switchbacks, I make it 90% of the way to the top and hear an English voice saying ‘hello’ behind me. He was so quiet I couldn’t believe I didn’t know he had crept up behind me, perhaps my own deep breathing was so loud it drowned any other cycling sounds out. We reached the top after some distracting conversation in the get to know you topics and he was one of 8 mates in a group that had come from Manchester England to ride hills around Bormio. After being invited to join this group of guys for lunch and a cruise ride down and back to Bormio, I was asked ‘so what do you do?’
Me: “I’m a goal coach”
Him: “A gold coach! Wow! How do you do that?”
This is the constant answer I get when it’s an unknown, however as I continue to tell him I teach people what they didn’t learn at school, university or work, about how to create their dream vision of the life, then how to set goals and mindsets to support the achievement of those goals, to bring the dream to reality. His eyes really light up!
Him: “Fascinating! That must be really rewarding.”
Me: “For both myself and my client.”
My passion and strengths as a goal coach has always been to help people achieve things they never thought they could, or have struggled to, and even more than that, teach and empower them with the tools, mindset and systems to be able to apply this to getting anywhere and anything they want in life.
My Goal Squad operates with a tried and tested framework for setting the vision, goals and keeping you in check weekly with accountability and coaching calls.
My Goal Squad has framed the term ‘goal coach’ as it’s the most fitting for what we focus on as we know it’s a results achieving framework that helps people in all areas of life.
What people, and perhaps this could be you, think they are looking for is a life coach. What they ACTUALLY need is goalsetting, a structure and someone to keep them accountable and supported with another perspective and positivity to move them forwards through challenges. That’s what we do best at My Goal Squad. In addition to that, we teach you the skills you can then use for your entire life, on any and all areas of life, to achieve what you want with clarity, a quiet confidence so you can see and know:
- What you are going to achieve,
- when you will achieve it,
- why you want to achieve it and
- how you are going to achieve it.
So then to take it one step further.. why and what are ‘Goals’?
Goals are the big things in life that you have clearly defined you want to achieve, because they will deliver a positive outcome to you and your life. Goals are things you have to go above and beyond living the normal way of life, as we call it ‘life by default’ to achieve. They are key things in the mid to long term future that you then work on day in day out in ‘life’ and when those day in, day out actions accumulate you see small steps turn into big actions. Before you know it, you have trained to run a marathon, when you would have otherwise just gone to the gym the ‘normal’ 4 x a week doing exercise to maintain your health. Instead you have now spent that time working towards an intentional goal that will give you a feeling of fulfilment, achievement, pride and be a springboard achievement for the next goal or achievement you set out to nail.
Goals give you an intentional life. You learn so much else about you and life from having goals such as: valuing your time, choosing to spend your time on things and people that will positively progress your life. You have focus in general and with that we can drop many activities and things out of our life that we don’t value, that we don’t want to focus on, that aren’t serving us. So the actions we undertake are fulfilling in themselves but more importantly they are helping us toward our dream life. Little is unintentional or wasted and we don’t get trapped into the hum drum of living the life we feel we are stuck with and being unhappy about that.
So as I made my way back to Bormio with these 8 new friends from Manchester I felt great pride is ticking a big goal off my list and the knowledge that I was living my dream life. Travelling the world, challenging myself physically with my bike riding, meeting new friends and spreading the word about the power of goal setting.
xx Ange, Head Goal Coach & Founder