The Goal Setting Mistake Most Competitors Make — And What to Do Instead
The year after I won at the World Series of Team Roping, I went in with the biggest goal of my competitive career.
I had been reading Grant Cardone's 10X rule — the idea that setting an enormous goal means even falling short puts you somewhere remarkable. So I set one. I decided I was going to be the highest female money winner in Finale history.
Big. Specific. Motivating.
Except it was in my head far more than it should have been. More than my process goals were. And when I got to the competition — the exact moment I needed to be most focused on what I could control right now — that outcome goal was taking up space that belonged to my game-day cues.
I did not perform at my best. And in retrospect, I know exactly why.
The goal wasn't wrong. The relationship I had with it was.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND WHY GOALS WORK
Let's start with what's actually happening in our brain when we set a clear goal.
Back in Week 14 on the Cowgirl Up podcast we talked about the Reticular Activating System — the RAS. This is our brain's filter system, responsible for deciding what information gets our attention and what gets ignored. And here's what's remarkable about it — when we set a clear specific goal, we are essentially programming our RAS with a new filter.
We are telling our brain: this is what matters. Look for this. Find evidence of this.
And our brain gets to work. Relevant opportunities that were always there suddenly catch our eye. Conversations that matter start finding us. Resources we never noticed before become visible.
This is why vague goals don't work. "I want to get better" gives our RAS nothing specific to scan for. But "I want to reach the next division within two years" — now our brain has a target. And it starts pulling everything relevant toward our attention.
This is also why writing our goals down matters. Committing a goal to paper sends a message to our subconscious that this is real and intentional — and our subconscious takes that seriously.
THE 95/5 RULE
Here's where most of us get goal setting wrong — and where I got it wrong that year in Vegas.
Performance psychology experts tell us we should only be focused on our big outcome goals about 5% of the time. Five percent. The other 95% of our focus should be on our process goals — the daily actions and cues we can actually control.
An outcome goal is the big result we're after. A championship. A personal record. A higher level of competition. These are worth having — a big scary goal can get us out of bed when we don't feel like it and keep us going through the daily grind.
But here's the problem with spending most of our mental energy on the outcome. The outcome is in the future. It's not something we can control today. And when we're fixated on a result that feels far away — or worse, when we're standing at the start line thinking about the score we need — our brain shifts into an anxious outcome-driven state that actively works against our performance.
Process goals are different. They belong to right now. They are what we can do in this practice, in this run, in this moment. The lacrosse player focused on watching her opponents hips and using her feet rather than the personal record she was chasing. My own game-day process goals at the WSTR Finale were see the start, be aggressive. Two things I could control. Nothing else.
And this becomes even more critical the closer we get to competition. The week before a big event is not the time to be replaying the outcome goal. That is exactly when we need to narrow our focus to our process — and let everything else go.
REVERSE ENGINEERING — MAKING BIG GOALS MANAGEABLE
So how do we build a process that actually connects our daily actions to our big goal?
We work backwards.
Start with the outcome goal. Then ask — what needs to happen in the next year for that goal to be within reach? What needs to happen in the next six months? What needs to happen this month to be on track? And what needs to happen this week?
When we reverse engineer a big goal, it stops living in the abstract future and starts showing up in our daily life. It stops feeling overwhelming and starts feeling like a series of very manageable decisions.
Every weekly step we execute is also a deposit into our confidence bank account — a concept we covered back in Week 3. And as Dr. Cindra Kamphoff's 2025 national confidence study confirmed, setting clear goals with a plan to achieve them is the number one evidence-based driver of confidence.
Goals build confidence. Process builds goals. And doing a little bit every day — one goal, one day, one step — adds up to a lot.
Set the goal. Work the process. Trust the math.
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Ready to go deeper? Listen to the Cowgirl Up podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts — new episodes drop Monday through Friday.
Interested in building a complete mental skills toolkit with personalized coaching support? Schedule a free discovery call at mentalgame101.com.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laurie Blickenstaff is a Certified Mental Performance Coach, competitive team roper, and founder of Mental Game 101. She hosts the Cowgirl Up daily mindset podcast and works one-on-one with women competitors in western horse sports who are ready to close the gap between their physical preparation and their mental game. Learn more at mentalgame101.com.
Mental performance training is NOT intended as, nor is it a substitute for, mental health care.
