We’ve coached 25,000 Navy SEALs, Google employees and Olympic athletes—what makes them highly successful

The best performers in the world are not born excellent — they learn excellence. 

In our careers as a clinical and performance psychologist, and an executive coach who spent 16 years at Google, we’ve worked with more than 25,000 top business leaders, athletes, military operators, first responders, tech employees, and more.

We’ve found that the No. 1 thing these stars do to become the best is set big goals across six aspects of their lives:

1. Work: Your job and career
2. Relationships: Romantic partners, family, friends, and colleagues
3. Health: Exercise, nutrition, and other aspects of physical well-being
4. Spirituality: Belief and practice that there is something purposeful beyond our physical and mental selves (this can encompass religion, but nonreligious people have spirituality, too)
5. Hobbies: Things we do for fun, education, or community
6. Legacy: What you’ll leave behind

Here are three steps elite performers take to set and achieve their goals:

We give our clients this prompt: One, three, and six months from now, what do you want to be true in each of the six aspects?

It’s better to have a few good goals than a bunch of mediocre ones. You can always add more, and keeping things simple helps ensure your resources are more tightly focused. 

Navy SEALs employ the “SMART” framework:

• Specific: It’s precise and well-defined. 
• Measurable: You’ll know when you have achieved it.
• Achievable: It’s challenging, but feasible.
• Relevant: It matters.
• Timebound: It should be achieved within a specified period. 

So “I will get in better shape” is not a SMART goal, but “I will be able to jog six miles in under an hour by December so I’ll be ready for my winter basketball league” is.

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It’s fine to set an ambitious outcome as a goal, but for every outcome goal (“make VP by age 35”), it’s a good idea to establish a process goal as well (“spend an hour a day studying the business”). Amateurs focus on outcome, professionals focus on process.

Keep in mind that people are far more motivated to achieve goals that are based on their values (intrinsic) than those based on what other people think (extrinsic). To ensure a goal is intrinsic, ask why it’s a goal. If the goal is to lose 10 pounds, why? Is it because someone said you look out of shape (extrinsic), or because you want to feel better and healthier (intrinsic)? 

Finally, developing meaningful goals should be a thoughtful, iterative process. Take your time and revisit and revise them.

The act of codifying a goal creates accountability; now that it has a physical presence, you have to make it happen.

“At a young age, I would write down all the tricks I wanted to learn,” says Toby Miller, the pro snowboarder.

“I still write down overall goals, the maneuvers I want to learn. I have specific goals for each camp. I write them down and bring the list with me,” he says. “If I’m having a bad day, I use my goals to turn it into a good day. There’s always something I can learn.”

Sharing the goal — with friends, colleagues, family — ratchets accountability up even more. You can go one step further by regularly updating your “accountability partners” on your progress.

A 2015 study led by psychologist Gail Matthews corroborates this goal-setting hierarchy: 43% of participants who merely thought about their goals achieved them (or were well on their way to success). Writing the goals down and sharing with a friend boosted that rate to 62%. And sending weekly progress updates to a friend cranked it up to 76%.

These public declarations and updates are more for you than for them: They’re an excellent strategy to push yourself toward success.  

Eric Potterat, PhD, is a performance psychologist who helped create the mental toughness curriculum used in Navy SEALs training. He’s worked with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the U.S. women’s national soccer team, the Miami Heat, Olympic athletes, first responders, business leaders, and NASA astronauts. He is also the co-author of “Learned Excellence.”

Alan Eagle is a executive communications consultant. He spent 16 years at Google, partnering with executives to communicate the company’s story to clients, partners, employees, and the public. He is the co-author of the books “How Google Works,” “Trillion Dollar Coach,” and most recently, “Learned Excellence.”

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