How To Be SMART:
Why Regular Goals Aren’t Good Enough

I don’t want to alarm you, or cause a panic but I do want to ask you a very serious question,

“How do you plan to make this year better than the last?”

Your answer to that question is deeply rooted in how you’ve set your goals.

While it might be your intention to do something different, it will take more than hope and positive thinking for what you want to match what you get out of the passing days, weeks and months remaining in the year.

Quite simply, you need a plan. Both for your business and your life.

A set of action steps that will propel you to the next level when you’re feeling confident and pull you forward when you’re feeling weak, tired and scared.

If it’s undeniable that you MUST have an action plan to achieve your desired outcomes, than how do you convert your goals into a step-by-step action plan that will help you make this your best year yet?

There are three simple things that you can do to turn your goals into reality:

1. You must recognize that your goals need to be S-M-A-R-T

2. You need to write them down or document them in some way

3. You need to get someone or something to which you can be accountable

I’ll focus on the S-M-A-R-T acronym because it spells things out in very plain language that makes goal setting easy to do – and most important- easy to follow. Here’s what I mean:

The ‘S’ stands for “Specific” – Whenever you take the time to make something specific – especially a goal – it has a much greater chance of coming to life.

One surefire way to set a specific goal is to answer these six “W” questions:

• Who:      Who (or what) is involved in reaching the goal successfully?
• What:     What exactly do I want to accomplish?
• When:     When will I accomplish this goal (set a date, day and time)
• Why:      Why is this goal important to me? (Give specific reasons or benefits)

The ‘M’ stands for “Measurable” – Determine the benchmarks and milestones you’ll establish to measure your progress toward the achievement of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you are better able to stay on track, reach your deadlines, and best of all gain the momentum and confidence necessary to reach your goals.

To make your goals measurable, ask yourself:

• How much? - As in, how much do I need to make or do, to know that I’m going in the direction of my goal?
  
• How many? – As in, how many do I need to sell or use, to know that I’m going in the direction of my goal?
  
• How will I know when it is accomplished? – As in, what will achievement look like, feel like, be like?

The ‘A’ stands for “Attainable” – Before setting goals, it’s important that you first figure out what it’s honesty going to take to reach them. This is not the time to be Pollyanna or pie-in-the-sky. You must take note of any limitations, deficiencies or self-sabotaging habits you have that could cause a serious threat to your goals. It might even be necessary to make a goal of working on what’s likely to hold you back.

Your goals can be as BIG as you’d like them to be. Just make sure that you break them down into manageable steps that will allow you to see and celebrate the progress you’re making along the way. The bigger the goal, the smaller the steps you’ll need to reach it.

The ‘R’ stands for “Realistic”  - To check on how realistic your goal is, ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal. Then determine if you are truly willing to make the adjustments and sacrifices to create the conditions necessary.

The size of the goal has nothting to do with how realistic it is, on the contrary – it should be a large goal. Just understand that a large goal will cause you to stretch. It’s the need for growth that will often challenge your perception of how realistic it is to achieve it.   

The ‘T’ stands for “Timely” - Goals need set time frames and parameters in which to be achieved. Without them there’s no sense of urgency, no real reason to get it done – in that case, ”Someday” will do…

However, if you want to make your first sale, book for your TV appearance, or pay off your credit card debt – by when do you want to do it? You need to choose a date in the future and work backwards toward it.

Making the declaration, “I will do ______ by July 31st” gives you something to which you can be accountable and a way to measure with each day that goes by if you are getting closer to where you want to be. Plus, it will allow your unconscious mind (which is where we operate from) know what you’re going after so that a plan can be set in motion to reach the goal.

If you haven’t set yourself up for success in reaching your goals, I strongly suggest that you use the SMART model of goal setting so that you can get closer to reaching your desired destination.

The feelings of time passing at lightening speed without you knowing where the day went and being overwhelmed by all the things you have to do will be greatly reduced when you know where you want to go, and you have a specific plan for how to get there.

You’d be SMART to set your goals this way.

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