It's a great time to get SMARTER about your goals!

The beginning point of any journey is deciding on the destination. A change to your behaviour, a desire to get healthier or maybe lose weight is no different. In order to make the most appropriate activity choices, maintain and reinforce motivation it is critical that you establish a clear goal.

By starting with this clearly defined desired outcome you have a solid basis for determining how to structure and progress your actions to ensure they are relevant and worthwhile.

SMARTER GOALS

Your goal setting process needs to both accurate and relevant to you. To assist in determining exactly what this goal should be, how to achieve it and where to begin, it can help to follow and/or check your goal against the points in the SMARTER acronym:

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Achievable

R - Relevant

T - Time Bound

E - Evaluated

R - Reviewed

Specific

Your goal needs to be clear and well defined. Vague goals are not helpful because they don’t provide you with sufficient guidance and direction and in order to be helpful.

Follow these simple steps:

Start with the big picture, the perfect world scenario. Write down what it is you want. Detail it looks like (colours and shapes are important), how it sounds or smells too if relevant.

Next detail how will you feel when you achieve it.

Next write down why this is important to you. What personal needs do you fulfil by achieving this goal? This step is fundamental so take your time and really think about what it is that is motivating you.

Now you have a detailed idea of big picture, next you need to break it down into smaller chunks. What steps do you need to complete in order to achieve this big picture? Each of these will form the goals you are going to work on.

At this stage you will need to consider the things you need to do and also the resources you need to have in place.

This process should assist you to identify a series of smaller steps, which are 100% specific to the achievement of your bigger goal.

One often overlooked but critically important aspect of detailing your vision is to ensure you write it as if you have skat achieved it. This 'future history' view reinforces that the events detailed in your vision are both relevant and achievable. Equally it positively frames your attitudes and perspectives for the future, stating and contracting with the universe that you have achieved these actions. One of the key drivers to goal achievement is that 'what you focus on is what you get'. If we select to focus our attention on the conclusion, we will begin to unconsciously position of behaviours to the determination of this reality. This doesn't mean there's not hard work ahead...it means we have placed the right energy and focus to the attraction of our specific vision.

NOW FOR EACH OF THE SMALLER GOALS YOU NEED TO ENSURE THE FOLLOWING:

Measurable

Simply you need to establish how you will know when you have achieved your goal and determine a way of gauging your success along the way. Ensuring a goal is quantifiable and measurable the ideal way.

Often, this can be quite simple, for example a determined ideal body weight in kgs/lbs. However, some goals are less directly quantifiable and it may take some creativity in determining how you will best measure your success. It is however key that you are able to determine where you are in respect of that success, setting milestones and reviewing objectives accordingly.

Achievable

It is important that the smaller goals you set are are both challenging and achievable. If you set a goal that you have no chance of achieving, it can destroy your motivation and confidence. Whilst it is important to understand the big picture goal, each individual smaller step should represent an achievable objective. The fundamental principle here is to ensure that it is in your power to accomplish the objective you have set.

It is however of equal importance that the individual goals should challenge you. Every step should contribute to you being closer to achieving your results. It is likely that a goal which is achieved without effort, commitment and perseverance will be of little ultimate benefit. You need to set goals that 'raise the bar' and ensure you move outside of your 'comfort zone'.

Relevant

This is attached in part to the previous principle of specificity, your goal has to be relevant based on your big picture desire and realistic based on your current circumstances. The relevance of the goal is based on it meeting some key points:

Does it seem worthwhile?

Is it the right time to complete this?