2024 Goal Setting for Irish dancers

It is almost the New Year and Irish dancers there’s no better time to do some goal setting. Goal setting is something that we do every month in the MWM Gold Club, but we think it is also great to do a Goal setting activity at the end of each year too. 

Goal setting is the act of carefully thinking about what you want to achieve, taking control of your daily habits and ultimately ends with a plan and lots of hard work. 

Irish dancers sometimes think that goal setting is simply ‘I want to qualify for the Worlds’ but it is SO much more than that. If we simply stopped at this very first stage and expected it to happen, then it wouldn’t. We have to put more thought and work into our goal setting and then our actions afterwards too. 

Firstly reflect…

So in our MWM Gold Club monthly goal setting classes we first start with a reflection section. We have to think about what we have done well throughout the year, and also what we haven’t done so well too. Without reflecting on the year we have just had, both positively and negatively, we can’t learn about how to best focus our goals and habits in the year ahead. 

It is super important to be honest with yourself during this goal setting reflection, as if we pretend we did everything perfectly (which no one has done because no one is perfect) then we won’t be learning from our experiences. 

Now look forward…

The next step is to think about the year to come and what we want to accomplish within the next 12 months. We often ask dancers to set more than one goal and not to focus solely on placement goals. Goals we often hear dancers come to us with are:

• Qualify for the Worlds 
• Improve my turnout
• Be more consistent with my practise schedule 
• Work on my mindset to become more positive

These goals are a nice mixture between placement goals and also goals that you have the ability to control. Next you need to think about HOW you are going to achieve these goals. Make a realistic plan of action and a schedule as to how you plan to turn these goals into action. This is where our habits come into play - what daily habits can you create to help you improve your turnout? Or to be more consistent? What daily habits do you need to remove from your life to achieve these goals? Do you need to work on your sleep schedule? Do you need to give more effort in at dance class? 

On Friday 29th December, our MWM Mindset Coach, Annabelle is going to be running a 2024 goal setting LIVE on Instagram at 2pm UK time! Add it into your diaries as you don’t want to miss it!