Realistic Goal Setting: My favorite Strategy

Whoever you may be, short or tall, big or small, old or young, you've set goals. Sometimes those goals are given to you by your boss (work incentives...yuck), other times the goals you've set are in the form of New Year's resolutions; but sometimes, you've set goals just for the sake of working toward an accomplishment. This blog post is aimed at teaching you how to set the best possible goals to guarantee you success.

I like to be as smart as I can be when setting goals. No really. SMART goal setting is something that I frequently do when initially meeting my clients and discussing what their fitness goals should be. SMART is an acronym standing for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Making sure that a goal follows these guidelines will lead to great odds of smashing that goal. Whether your goal is related to fitness, financials, personal growth, or your occupation, the SMART acronym can allow you to outline the aspects of a good goal to aim for.

The first letter of smart is 's' of course, in the case of our acronym 's' stands for specific. The more specific your goal is, the more driven and disciplined you will be to focus on that goal and succeed in accomplishing whatever you set out to do. Picture this, one of your goals is to start walking more. That is not a very specific goal. With a goal like that in mind, maybe you typically walk twice a week and with that goal maybe you begin walking twice a week, but a little further, or maybe three times per week. Fanastic, however, while you are walking more, than the twice per week you walked before, your new walking bouts aren't very structured thus you're unlikely to adhere to that walking goal. If we tweak your goal from walking more to walking 3 times per week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after work, then suddenly your goal is more specific and you have time set aside in your routine to help you just focus on that goal. The goal is much less abstract.

The 'm' in the smart acronym stands for measurable. Great goals are ones that are objectively measured. You want your goal to be measurable so that as you are working towards your goal you can gauge your progress and tweak intensity if needed. going back to our 'walking more' example; if you have a baseline amount that you already walk, than working towards a goal of walking more could be measurable, however, how are we walking more? Are we walking more frequently? Walking for a longer duration? How much more frequently or how much longer are we walking? having our goal be measurable eliminates these questions. A better goal for us would be 'Walking 3 times per week for an hour each time, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.' Viola! Now our goal is more specific AND measurable.

The 'a' in the smart acronym is all about attainability. Think realism. Is the goal we set even possible for us to achieve? If a goal is impossible to reach, then why even try? going back to our working goal example, sure the initial goal of simply walking more is likely attainable, but it is so vague. Would you be content if you walked one second more per week then you typically do? Five minutes more? ten minutes? and hour? a line must be drawn as to what is attainable or not. For the sake of explaining these goals, let us assume that you are able to walk 3 times per week for an hour each time Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Suddenly we have a goal that is specific, measurable, and attainable, none of which described our other goal of walking more!

Our goal should also be relevant. Without relevance to your life, what is the point of setting a goal. I have no interest in being a lumberjack so why would I set a goal to cut down 1,000 trees this year? A fitness example of a goal lacking relevance could be a goal of weight loss for somebody who is also interested in competing in a strong man event. (Generally, it is advantageous to weigh more in strong man events due to the ability to lift heavier weights and contain a higher volume of myofibrils leading to increased power output) If the broad goal is do more cardio or simply walk more than our featured example of a goal also contains relevance to our lifestyle.

Finally, the goal should be time bound. This is useful for holding yourself accountable towards achieving a goal. Without a deadline to accomplish something, procrastination and excuses become inevitable. Let's make one final tweak to our 'walking' goal. Original goal "I want to walk more", New Goal " I am going to walk three times per week for an hour each time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a year in order to improve my heart health". Now THAT is a much better goal and a SMART one as well! Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.