It’s a new year and an opportunity to give your “health” goal a fresh start! Perhaps you have made New Year’s Resolutions in the past, with the best of intentions, but your commitment waned by March? Or perhaps you feel it is a waste of your time and energy to make a resolution “just because it’s that time of the year”? Goal setting is a powerful way of motivating yourself!
By understanding a few of the benefits of setting goals, you may just be motivated enough to set yourself three S.M.A.R.T goals for 2015!
Six Benefits to Setting Goals
1. Clarity: Goals give you a “track to run on,” a path or a map to follow so that you know where you are going.
2. Focus: Goal setting requires you to set priorities
3. Efficiency: When you are clear on what you want to accomplish and where you want to go, you begin to take steps to get there.
4. Dreams: Goals help you to visualize and plan actions to achieve what you want then carry it out.
5. Increased confidence: Goals give you a sense of victory of past goals accomplished and motivation to succeed in current goals. They help increase your self-confidence.
6. Results: Studies indicate people who have written goals accomplish more than those who do not.
S.M.A.R.T Goal Setting
Goal setting does not need to be complicated. It also does not need to take a lot of time. Using S.M.A.R.T goals principles will help keep goal writing simple. S.M.A.R.T Goals is a researched process that makes success attainable.
S.M.A.R.T goals are:
• Specific
• Measureable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely
Specific
A specific goal will answer the six “W” questions: Who, What, Where, When, Which and Why. EXAMPLE: “To improve my heart heath, I will walk four laps around the track of my neighbourhood park three days a week.”
Measureable
A measureable goal will help you stay on track and check your progress. EXAMPLE: I will walk 30 to 45 minutes on Mondays and Wednesdays after work, and Saturday mornings.
Attainable
An attainable goal should stretch you slightly so that you feel you are being challenged, but the goal should not be impossible to achieve.
Realistic
A realistic goal is within your reach and requires that you have the knowledge, skills and abilities to reach the goal. “I will lose 10kg this week” is unrealistic, however, “I will lose 1kg this week” is totally realistic.
Timely
Your goal should have a deadline to give you a sense of urgency to start taking action to achieve the goal. Be sure to include a start date and target date. It’s a good idea to set milestones along the way to an ambitious goal; like “I will lose the first five kilos by xx/xx/xxxx date, the next five by xx/xx/xxxx,” and so forth. One big goal and deadline is a lot harder to manage for most of us!
The main thing is to focus on aiming towards a healthier and happier way of being – starting NOW. Enjoy 2015!
The author of this blog is Belinda Diers-Hahn, the Senior Psychologist at our Loganholm Practice
Adapted from Jacksoncareconnect.org