Setting Goals and Overcoming Setbacks

Hello again, it's Diana.

As a professional athlete and founder of the Northern Super League,

I've learned the importance of setting goals and overcoming setbacks the hard way.

But building resilience has been invaluable.

Mastering both goal setting and resilience is essential to get where you want to go and to being a leader in your daily life.

In this lesson, we'll talk a bit about how to do it.

Let me tell you a secret.

Nobody knows what they're doing.

Not really, not a hundred percent,

but the key is to start anyway.

Starting can be daunting, but you don't have to have all the answers from the beginning.

You might know exactly where you wanna get to,

but if you don't have a plan for how to get there, the task can feel impossible.

Setting goals helps measure progress, and having a clear vision helps unify people and gain support.

Let's talk about one nice approach you can use today to make sure you're setting a SMART goal.

SMART is an acronym.

A SMART goal is

specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Let's use my goal of building one of the top women's soccer leagues in the world to see how this works.

Specific,

build one of the top women's soccer leagues in the world in Canada.

Measurable,

we look at things like average attendance, TV and streaming viewership, sponsorship dollars and competitive balance within the league.

Achievable,

we know that Canada has one of the third largest player pools in the world,

produces some of the best players in the world,

and has an engaged fan market and is a great country for sports gender equity.

Relevant,

Canada needs a professional soccer league to continue to succeed internationally in women's soccer.

The global market for women's sport and women's soccer is growing rapidly.

It supports gender equity and creates jobs for not just athletes,

but coaches, referees, sport business, sport media, sport science, and more.

Time-bound,

we started in 2022 and the goal was to kick off by 2025,

before the FIFA World Cup™ in 2026,

the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup™ and the 2028 Olympic Games.

Now it's your turn.

Choose a goal and see how the SMART framework can help you work towards achieving that goal.

Setbacks in sport are often through losses or injuries.

For me, it was injury.

Just seven months before we were to host the FIFA Women's World Cup™ on home soil in Canada,

I had one of the worst setbacks in my life.

I tore my ACL, and during the recovery, just three months out, I broke my foot.

Two injuries before what was to be the biggest tournament of my life.

It took all the resilience I had to reach my goal of representing my country that summer.

To do great things, you'll have to learn how to deal with a path that maybe doesn't look like what you first had in mind.

It's all part of the process.

Let's talk about a few strategies for leading through tough times.

Always be clear on who you are

and act according to who you are, not how you feel in the moment.

Think of it like this.

Identity drives actions, drives feelings.

So how people see themselves, identity,

influences what they do, actions,

which then shapes their emotions, feelings.

But it can be really easy to do the opposite,

to allow your feelings to drive how you behave or act,

and then that informs how people see you or how you see yourself.

But high performers and leaders, lead with identity.

To grow the league,

I've had to always be selling people on my vision,

and I can tell you I have heard many, many more nos than yeses.

But if you reframe rejection as redirection,

you'll always have opportunities to improve.

It's about having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset.

This is the belief that things can change for the better through continued hard work

and that obstacles and challenges present opportunities to learn and grow.

The best thing about sports is working in a team.

Look to mentors for inspiration and share that inspiration with others.

Don't be afraid to ask for help.

I am where I am because of the incredible mentors I've had in my life,

from women in business to coaches.

They've taught me things like be true to myself, follow my values, and more than anything,

that anything worth doing doesn't come without challenges and obstacles and the unexpected.

So let's summarize quickly.

We covered a lot on how to set good goals

and what to do when the road to achieving them gets tough.

Always set SMART goals.

Do your best to be consistent.

Remember that rejection is redirection

and build your team.

The best leaders are able to unite people around a common vision.

For me as a player, it was leaving the game better than we found it,

and that's carried me now into building women's professional soccer in Canada.