What are SMART goals?

How to successfully accomplish our goals?

Who among us doesn’t love a big, lofty goal? Be more emotionally available, learn a new language, spend more time on self-care, you get the jist. Working on ourselves is an evolving and ambitious state of being. It’s one of the many reasons that I love my job! To help teach others how to facilitate change and be that better version of themselves.

I’m sure you noticed that my goals are not only lofty but also a bit vague. How will anyone know if they are spending “more” time on self-care? Or when they have learned a whole new language!? Where are the clues that let us know that we have successfully accomplished our goals?

How to set SMART goals?

This is where SMART goals come in. SMART is not just a clever name, it is also an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Creating goals using this system allows us to know exactly when we have accomplished our goal. Let’s go back to our goal, “spend more time on self-care”, and see if we can smarten it up.

Before the end of each week in March, I will spend 45 minutes engaging in self-care.

Pretty good, so far, but I wonder if we can make it any more specific. What is self-care anyway? This will certainly be different for everyone, but for our example let’s say self-care includes things like going for a walk and enjoying our favorite cup of tea.

Before the end of each week in March, I will go on one 30-minute walk and enjoy a glass of Earl Gray tea.

That’s much better! We have set a specific, achievable, relevant goal regarding our self-care practices and we have given ourselves a timeline to do it by! 

How do I help my child set and achieve goals?

For my parents and college students out there, this method can help ease the anxiety around assignments. That dark looming cloud on the horizon that is the book report or the research paper doesn’t have to feel so impossible or daunting anymore.

By taking our larger goals and turning them into specific, more workable steps using the SMART approach, a path to the finish line starts to emerge. We can eliminate the decision paralysis that starts to take hold and successfully accomplish the task at hand!