Start off SMART in 2023
By: Jonathan Lundblad, MA, TLLP
New year, new beginnings: this is commonly said to beckon positivity into the new year. But what does a new beginning mean? To conceptualize a new beginning, the proverb “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” accurately summarizes it. A new beginning can take the form of many different things, but they all have one common attribute: a goal. To set out on a journey, there must be a destination. We think of the journey as the vehicle that gets us to our desired destination. But have we been thinking about it wrong? The journey to our new year’s resolution is just as important, if not more important, than the destination or goal we aim to achieve. We may tell ourselves – “This year it’ll be different. I’ll go to the gym every single day.” This mentality usually lasts about a few weeks into the new year but as things come up, resolutions get set aside. Proper goal setting is key to shaping our journey so that we may arrive at our desired destination.
When designing our goals, it is important to make them SMART; that is: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. To be specific is to make sure our goals are clearly defined and exactly what we are hoping to achieve. Instead of wanting to “get in shape,” we could say we “want to work out at the gym for 1 hour each day.” This can provide us with clear parameters to achieve our goals. A measurable goal is one we can track to observe progress. With the example of the gym, we can put a checkmark on the calendar for the days we spend 1 hour at the gym. For a goal to be attainable it must be something that we can realistically achieve. This helps us to make sure that all our steps on the journey are within our control. An early attainable goal could be to go to the gym two times in one week. A relevant goal ensures that our plan has some positive outcome and is important to us. Lastly, a time-bound goal includes a deadline; such as setting up a specific time for when we go and do the activity or for when we hope we achieve our overall goal. If we don’t set a timetable for ourselves, we are more likely to keep pushing it off and telling ourselves “Yeah, I’ll do it someday.” After going through all of the steps of our SMART goal we can now take our example of “wanting to get in shape” and transform it into “I will go to the gym for one hour, twice a week, and will keep track by putting a checkmark in my calendar.” SMART goals allow us to break down our journey of a thousand miles into realistic, individual steps we can readily achieve and sustain throughout the year.