Goal-setting: It's not too late to get SMART

We’re three weeks into the New Year and whether you’ve taken action and started working on your fitness goals or not, now is a good time to take a closer look at your goals. How you set your goals will play a big role in whether you achieve them or not. Goal-setting is a skill and like any skill, it can be learned and improved with practice.

The key to successful goal-setting (which sets you up for goal-achieving) is being SMART about it:

SMART goal-setting breaks down as follows:

S—Specific
M—Measurable
A—Attainable
R—Recorded
T—Time-oriented

You will be far more likely to succeed in achieving your goals if your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Recorded and Time-oriented.

Let’s look at each one of these factors individually.

S—Specific
You’ve got to make your goals specific. This means taking your ‘lose weight’ goal and turning it into ‘lose 10 lbs.’ or changing ‘build muscle’ into ‘add 5 lbs. of muscle’. ‘Get toned’ turns into ‘Lower bodyfat by 5%’ (for example). The key here is making your goal real enough to engage your mind at the subconscious level. Your subconscious mind can’t—or won’t—get engaged in something vague and nebulous, like ‘lose weight’, but it certainly can get very involved in losing 5 pounds, for example. Specificity ties in with the next part of intelligent goal-setting, measurability.

M—Measurable
Once you make your goal specific, you’ve got to specify some criteria for measurement. This is the best way for you to measure your progress along the way and to determine whether you have reached your goal or not. Having criteria for measurement helps to engage your subconscious mind. Being engaged in achieving your goal on a subconscious level can be very effective.

A—Attainable
One very important consideration when it comes to goal-setting is making your goals realistic. So make sure that your goal is attainable. What qualifies as attainable is very much up to you. The key here is to make your goal a bit of a stretch…but not too much of a stretch: make sure your goal will challenge you, but don’t set yourself up for failure before you begin by setting a goal that your will never achieve.

R—Recorded
When you set a goal for yourself, unless you are not really interested in achieving it (in which case, it is time to really accept how much you really enjoy your current reality), you’ve got to make it real. One very simple, yet very powerful way of doing this is to write it down. Writing your goals down engages your brain in a very different way from simply thinking or speaking about them. In deciding to begin your journey to greater fitness, you have really decided to transform your life. Transforming your life ends up meaning changing some of your habits—be they habits of thought or action. Providing yourself with a written reminder of your commitment—in your journal or planner or beside your calendar—will be very helpful, both as a conscious and subconscious reminder of the progress you make along the way and as a means of organizing your plan for achieving your goal.

T—Time-oriented
Speaking of a plan, your goal needs a timeline. Without a timeline, your specific, measurable, attainable, recorded goal may never be achieved…because you have no timeline for achieving it. A timeline will help spur you into action and is vital for the construction of your plan of action.

Further, having something concrete, like your goals written down in your journal or agenda or beside your calendar, provides a regular conscious and sub-conscious reminder of your goal.

As I mentioned last week, it’s easy enough to get motivated around the start of the New Year: it’s a time to reflect on the past and a time to give thought to the future. Further, at this particular time in our history, we are feeling even more hopeful: now is a time that is pregnant with possibilities. The biggest challenge for many will be maintaining this level of motivation. Remaining committed to your goals is best thought of as being a process. This moment-to-moment process requires some regular nurturing and reinforcement. Setting SMART goals makes them more than just nice ideas or fantasies.

Once you’ve taken the time to put pen to paper and write down your goals, it’s time to come up with a plan. How are you going to achieve your fitness goals for 2009? Does everyone need a personal trainer to help them along the way?