As a young football player, I was told “you play as you practice” meaning if you want to be a professional football player you must create the best habit of practice that you stick to and act on each week. Your consistent small actions will then compound and lead to your goal.

This simple lesson from my coach has led me to an insight that counts in football as well as in life:

Goals, choices, and habits shape our lives and the daily habits and choices we make have a compound effect on our success or failure in life.

But the difference between a young boy and a middle-aged guy like me is that during the years I sometimes have forgotten how to set goals like being a professional football player.

It seems like the power of choices and habits only compounds and leads to results if I have a clear and solid goal and believe as a platform.

When applying the power of goals, choices, and habits it can be useful to think of it as an onion with three layers.

The outer layer is your habits, the second layer is your choices, and the inner layer is your goal.

From my experience the compound effect happens when aligning the three layers like this:

1. Find your goal and create an attitude and believe that supports it
2. Define the key choices and actions you need to do each day to reach your goal
3. Make a focus log defining what to do each day
4. Focus on your gains and your momentum in percentage

If the choices and habits, you have can be seen as a linear multiplier your goals supported by a good attitude and believe are exponential multipliers.

In short you have to get good at getting good.

This counts in football as in life.