What does ‘Keeping your eye on the prize’ really mean?
What is ‘the prize’?
What is meant by ‘keeping your eye’ on something?
Last weekend, I was with my husband sawing blocks of wood up for my parents, and we came across an extremely tough log of wood.
It took so long to cut it in half to be a size that would fit in the firebox.
As we were sawing though the log, it wanted to wobble around and we both had to place a foot on it to keep it still.
In my head I heard the words ‘Keep your eye on the prize’ and that is exactly what we were doing. We had a goal that was to cut the log in two, and we were committed to getting the chainsaw to cut all the way through. We had to keep our eyes on the log to make sure it didn’t roll around, and either cause the chainsaw blade to jam or injure one of us.
Finally, we had success—we cut the log in two and moved on to the rest of the pile.
Let’s consider the statement ‘keeping your eye on the prize’ with this example, and how it can relate to goals and focus.
The log was the prize in the example above, but maybe you can think of the prize as a reward at the end of a project, or the final result. It could be how you will feel, or where you will be physically, or something else. It might be losing that weight, getting that promotion, or winning a gold medal. You could say it is ‘Achieving your goal’.
What about ‘Keeping your eye’ on something. We were keeping our eye on the bit of wood that we wanted cut into two. We needed to maintain our focus so that the wood didn’t move, that the log did get split, and that we weren’t injured in the process. Taking a goal mindset, ‘keeping your eye’ on something could mean keeping a focus on where you want to be or on achieving your goal.
So ‘Keeping your eye on the prize’ could be explained as ‘Keeping your goal in focus’
As a coach, we work to help you to:
- identify your goal and imagine how achieving that goal would make you feel, how it would look, where you would be, and what you would have achieved
- think about what you have already achieved towards that goal and what might be stopping you
- explore possibilities and steps that you can take towards your goal
- commit to the goal and actions and ‘keep your eye on the prize’ or ‘keep your goal in focus’
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