Image Credit: © James Jordan
It has been said that nobody plans to fail, they simply fail to plan. And what’s a plan? It is a blueprint that outlines the steps involved in making something, or getting somewhere. What comes at the end of the plan is called a “goal”. The desired result. Put enough of these plans and goals together and you end up with a life. But think about this: if your plans are crappy or non-existent, the resulting life will be crappy and non-existent (metaphorically speaking). Also, if the plans and goals are not your own, the resulting life won’t be your own either.
Luckily there is a brain in that head of your’s and you can choose. Choose to have no plans and no life. Choose to follow somebody else’s plans and probably still have no life. Or you can follow your own plans, making conscious decisions about what you want, who you want to be, where you want to go, and live a truly amazing life.
This article is going to deal with the mechanics of those plans. How to set a goal.
Goal Setting Is A Crock — They Never Work
If you agree with that heading, I know your pain. I’ve been there. Heard all the hype. All that rubbish about “if you want to make it big, you have to set big goals”. That advice is so incredibly destructive for the person who hasn’t formed the habit of goal setting in all aspects of their life. Maybe they’ve never set a goal before and they are told to set HUGE goals. What happens? They fail in a HUGE way. And many never come back to try it again. I won’t tell you the damage this causes to someone who suffers from or is prone to depression. But it is bad. Trust me, it is incredibly bad.
Is there an answer? Can we get past this? I’m happy to report that YES. YES you can…
Advice For The Disheartened
- Start small. And when I say “small” I mean teeny tiny. If this is your first time, or if you related to what I said before about goal setting being a crock, your first goals need to be really tiny. They should be achievable in no more than 24 hours.
- Set goals for EVERYTHING. OK, maybe not everything, you don’t need to set a goal to visit the bathroom for instance. But if you have a daily todo list, and you should, then you have a list of daily goals to work on. Take those and work each of them through with the rest of the steps in this article.
- Know that sometimes you WILL fail. How you deal with that failure is a subject for a future article, but remember this: You cannot have success without failure. Take a quick look at what went wrong, learn from it, and move on. This is another reason why you start small. The failures are small and learning how to cope with them… how to embrace them, is easier when they are small.
SMART Goals
All of your goals have to be SMART goals. ”SMART” is an acronym for: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time-bound.
Specific: ”I want to lose weight” is not a specific goal. ”I will lose 5kg by Feb 28th by attending gym 3 times a week and following a sensible diet.” is a specific goal. You get what I mean there, yeah?
Measurable: You have to have some way of telling when you have achieved the goal. Using the example above, you jump on the scales before you start to get a baseline figure. Follow all the action steps of the goal, and then jump on the scales again on Feb 28th. If the second number is at least 5kg less than the first… goal ACHIEVED! Some goals will allow you to measure your progress along the way as well to see how you are going. In our weight loss example, you could check your progress on the scales once per week.
Attainable: Can you achieve the goal? Do you believe you can do it? If you have any doubts, then you probably can’t. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed, it just means that perhaps you need to re-think some aspects of the goal. Back to our weight loss example, if today’s date is Feb 25th then it is a pretty safe bet that the goal isn’t attainable, but if it is Jan 25th, then it certainly is doable. Your goals have to be realistic, so apply some common sense.
Relevant: Your goals must be relevant to who you are, what you are doing, and where you want to be. If your goals aren’t relevant to you, then I’m afraid you are chasing somebody else’s goals.
Time-bound: Your goals must have a specific time frame attached to them. “I want to lose weight” Oh, yeah? When? Every goal you set must have a specific date by when they will be achieved. It doesn’t matter if you achieve them sooner. More power to ya if you do. Don’t stress if the deadline passes and the goal still hasn’t been achieved. Just re-assess and work through it again. Better than that, make progress reviews along the way and if if looks like you’re not gonna make it, dig a little deeper, or even change the deadline. They are your goals. You can be flexible to change them along the way if you want to. Sometimes you have to.
If It Is Not Written, It Is NOT A Goal
That’s right. If you do not write your goals down on paper (or computer) they are not goals. They are only dreams. And yes, there is a right and wrong way to do this. Your written goal must be stated positively and it must include specific action steps for it’s completion. It should also deal with possible obstacles that you might run into along the way. It should also show the benefits of achieving the goal. (if you can’t see the benefits, why are you setting the goal).
The more care and effort you put into this step the easier and straight forward achieving your goals will be. And to make it even easier for you I have designed a “Goal Action Sheet“. That is a link to a Google Docs document. You can download the document in a number of different formats, including OpenOffice, PDF, Word, or Text. It has been formatted to print nicely on 2 A4 pages, so it might look a bit funky on a computer screen depending on your screen resolution. Save the trees and print on both sides of your paper.
Filling Out The Action Sheet
If you haven’t downloaded or seen the Action Sheet this section will be meaningless to you.
Area Of Life: One of the six areas of your life, being: physical, spiritual, family, financial, mental, or social.
Today’s Date: Self explanatory.
Final Target Date: This is the date by which you want to have the goal achieved by. It is the “T” in “SMART”.
Date Achieved: Self explanatory.
Statement of Goal: Where you put what the goal actually is. State the goal clearly and specifically. State it in positive terms and make it as concrete as possible so that you will be able to devise specific action steps for achieving it.
How I will benefit from achieving this goal: List here all the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that you will reap from achieving this goal.
Possible Obstacles: What might go wrong? Think about all the things that could stop you from achieving the goal and put them in this section.
Strategies for Overcoming Obstacles: For each obstacle, write down possible ways that you can overcome them. Quite often, just doing this can prevent the obstacle from showing up in the first place.
Specific Action Steps For Achieving This Goal: Break your goal down into individual action steps. Put these steps into this section.
Target Date: This is the date that each individual action step should be completed.
Completed: Put a tick or check mark here as you complete each action step.
Is it worth the time, effort, and money to reach this goal?: Answer this question honestly and truthfully. And do not be scared to say “no”. When you do say “yes”, commit to it with everything you have. When you say “no” be proud of yourself for investigating something and being big enough to realise that you do not want it.
Affirmations To Support This Goal: Write down some positive “self-talk” to help you visualise already having achieved the goal. Sorry for being a little vague on this one, there will be an article about affirmations coming some time soon.
The End Of The Article, But The Beginning Of Your Journey
Do you remember SMART? I want to add 3 more letters to that acronym… “WAD”. Your goals need to be “SMARTWAD” goals. The “WAD” stands for: ”Written Ardently Desired”. Any goal you make must be written, and it must be ARDENTLY DESIRED. Say that again, out loud. Put on your grrrr face, grit your teeth and say it out loud. That’s how you must feel about your goals. Saying “oh yeah, that’d be nice” is no way to be about your goals. You have to want them so bad that you’ll fight tooth and nail to get them.
Now go download that Action Sheet and start achieving well thought out and planned goals.
Till next time…
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Awesome!!!!
I love goals setting and Steve your post is bang on.
There are two biggies for me (that you’ve already made).
Write it down! Oh my….how many times have not done this? It’s the only way to goal set. WRITE. IT. DOWN. I love how you said when you don’t write a goal down its not a goal and only a dream. Steve, I’ve been struggling for 3 years to explain the concept of writing down goals and why it’s important to young people and have never found the write words to say. Now I have. Thank you!
Passion! You’ve so got to be Grrrr!!! about your goals otherwise they’re just things you’d like to do.
Brilliant post buddy!
You’re really growing as a writer – I can see it in every post.
Thank you so much for the amazing compliments, Ben. Of course all of my future articles will have to cause you to want to react in a similar way.
Thank you so much for stopping by and taking the time to comment, Ben. You rock, mate, you seriously rock!
Till next time,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Hey Ben,
On top of writing it down, there’s affirmations. Saying out aloud what you’re going to do also gets results.
Top comment Ben.
.-= Matthew Needham´s last blog ..Aliens have landed =-.
Twitter: bigredtomato
Yep, that’s why I included a “affirmations” section on the Action Sheet. Also see The Little Engine That Could.
Thanks very much for stopping by, Matthew!
Kind regards,
Steve.
.-= SteveYoungs´s last blog ..The Little Engine That Could =-.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I can only echo Ben’s words Steve, awesome piece. This post was very timely for me. I’ve often written goals down but they’ve always been non-specific and so hard they couldn’t be measured or given a target date. I’m downloading and using your action form today.
Making it personal, your weight loss example is very pertinent. I’ve lost weight over the years but have been a few pounds short of my wishy-washy target for ages. Having read your post, I put that down to not setting good proper targets. Will let you know how it goes ad a result of this advice
Thanks Steve, re-tweeting now.
Hi Eleanor!
Always wonderful to see you here. Yes, one of the biggest stumbling blocks to achieving your goals is to not set them out clearly and specifically with a step by step action plan. It’s like trying to make a cake without the recipe. Even if you have all of the ingredients, if you don’t know exactly how to put them together and in what order, you just end up with a horrible mess in your kitchen. And you’re still hungry.
I wish you every success with your ideal weight goals, Eleanor. And you are more than welcome to give me a shout if you want any help with it.
Thank you so much for stopping by.
All the best,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
Steve, I can’t say I agree with everything you say here. I never write my goals down. I just set small goals and work towards them. It brings you closer to achieving what you want.
Hi Rose!
First of all, welcome to my part of this wondrous thing we call the Internet. It’s always a pleasure to see a new face in my comments section.
Rose, if you have a system in place for setting and achieving your goals that is working for you, that’s fantastic! I’m not about to tell you that your system is wrong. Your past achievements are proof enough that your system works… for you. However, not everyone is as focused, driven, and organised as you obviously are. Some people need rigid structure to get to where they want to go (with varying degrees of rigidity and structure of course).
Thanks for stopping by, Rose. Hope to see you again soon!
Kind regards,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I have not made any great goals in my life. I feel that above all you should have a why and along with that there should be positive steps to be taken and recorded as you go along.
Sometimes actually being negative even helps in the sense that if you’re uncomfortable, you will want to move to a more comfortable place which means taking more positive action.
What do you think?
Twitter: bluepop13
Yes! Absolutely! In fact, without healthy discontent, (which is what you are talking about), progress could not happen.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
I have two letters to add to the SMART acronym.
E and R.
Exciting and Rewarding.
If a goal is both exciting and rewarding then the chances of it being achieved is much greater.
.-= Matthew Needham´s last blog ..Aliens have landed =-.
Twitter: bigredtomato
Hey Matthew!
And if the goal itself isn’t exciting, you can certainly get excited about it.
As for rewarding, aren’t all goals rewarding? I mean, it there was no reward you wouldn’t be chasing it, would you?
I have seen the “E R” used before and I understand what you’re getting at. For me personally, they are both intrinsically included by default.
Thanks very much for your comments, Matthew!
Kind regards,
Steve.
Twitter: SteveYoungs
[...] as it is important to set and work towards your own goals, it is equally important to create your own affirmations to support them. Why? Because you can [...]