SMART goals for personal development. You might even know what smart goals are,
and they are a great thing to keep in mind when you set goals but how do you adapt
them for more amorphous things like improving my relationships, being better about my boundaries,
lowering my anxiety. Well, I'm going to walk you through four keys to setting smart goals
for personal development and actually one reason i decided to do this video today
is that i've been working on a series of videos about reparenting yourself and the next video i'm
going to come out with in the series is practical steps for reparenting now reparenting is a big
amorphous topic but there are some very specific things we can do so i want to refer to SMART goals
and I realized haven't really put out a video on SMARTgoals so i decided to do this first
and if you're interested in the overall topic of re-parenting or in general living a more joyful
life make sure you subscribe to my channel so let's get into the topic the concept of
smart goals was first put forth by a management consultant named george duran in 1981 and this
concept has proven very useful solid it's really pervasively used throughout the business world and
it's also used in the personal development world so smart goals are specific measurable attainable
relevant and time-bound there's a time frame for these goals so let me give you an example
let's say you want to run a marathon and you tell your friends on my bucket list i'm going to run
a marathon one day well that's not really a goal it certainly isn't a smart goal because it's not
specific it's more of an aspiration it's more of a wish which is wonderful aspirations are great
but how do you turn that into a goal so to make it a goal let's make it specific
okay specifically i'm going to run the boston marathon this fall i'm not going to do that nope
but let's say that's what you decided so that would be making your goal more specific who me
what and when run a marathon this fall so is it measurable sure it's measurable whether you do
it or not right is it attainable well i happen to know because i have two family members who will
be running the boston marathon this fall that if you have not been accepted into the boston
marathon it is now july of 2021 you will not be running it this fall because the acceptances
have already gone out plus for the boston marathon i believe you need a qualifying time
so as you go through this goal you might hit this step of attainable and realize oh i can't do it
i might as well bag it but if you really keep the focus on a smart goal you could say okay i
can't do it this fall and maybe i can't do it in boston because i may not have a qualifying time
but i can research where there is a marathon that i can run as a first-timer and that could be one
of your next steps and steps can also be smart so hopefully you can see how this can be an iterative
process and then the other piece of attainable is is it attainable for me can i practice and train
enough and probably having more than a few months would be a good idea for that as well so i'm going
to skip from there to time bound so let's say we now say i am going to run a marathon sometime in
the next 18 months i've shifted my time frame to make it more attainable but it is still a specific
time frame so let me back up to the r is this relevant is this goal relevant to me
my life my self-esteem my image of myself will it be fun for me will i have enough motivation
to push through the pain of achieving this goal it needs to be relevant to myself and my sense of
self so having revised this goal a little bit we can then get very specific and maybe we could say
this week i'm going to research where i can run a marathon within the next 18 months
and i will complete that task in one week and then to make it even more specific i'm going to
put it on my calendar for tuesday morning between 9 a.m and 10 a.m and then i can develop some very
specific goals around training so that's turning an aspiration into a smart goal so a specific goal
like running a marathon fits very well into the smart goal framework but how do we apply
it to those other more amorphous concepts that i mentioned so i'm going to talk you through how you
can take a more amorphous personal development goal and make it more specific but before i do
that i want to run through those four keys to setting goals in a way that you can achieve them
so you set yourself up for success so the number one key here is to focus on what you can control
this is the biggest mistake that people make in goal setting particularly in the personal
development area so focusing on what you can control let's say you're a writer and you want to
get published that's your sort of big picture goal but to turn it into a smart goal you need to focus
on what you can control so what can you control you can control whether you send your short
stories to publishers you can control whether you actually put things out there in the world
you may not be able to control whether it actually gets published as a writer you can also control
the amount of time you spend writing within limits right we all there's always always things happen
but let's say part of your goal is to say i will write two days a week for three hours i'll just
put my butt in the chair and i will write for those three hours well that is something that
you have control over i'd also like to add that focusing on what we can't control is
very demotivating it is one of the quickest ways to get off track the second key is to make sure
that these goals are in line with your true values if you set yourself a goal for running a marathon
but you don't really care about it at the end of the day it doesn't really go to your core
sense of self or it's not super important to you well then getting through the pain and suffering
and time it will take to push yourself to that extent at the end of the day won't be worth it
so key number two is to focus on goals that are in alignment with your values and i work
on this with people in my group coaching program we spend a good amount of time really going into
what are our values what's our vision for our life what's our mission and then we set goals
from there and i'll talk about the program a little bit more at the end of today's video
so key number three is to use relatively short time frames with a period to reassess
so here i'm going to jump into one of the more amorphous areas and lead you
into how these keys can help you make smart goals so let's say you are working on your
boundaries and you've realized that you are an inveterate advice giver you give advice to people
all the time and you realize that that's a bit of a boundary crossing so you make a resolution to
stop giving advice to your loved ones to see whether it improves the relationship or not
again this is a common thing that i work with people on so you could just say okay i'm going
to stop giving advice well done measurable that's way too amorphous that would be very
hard to follow and instead it could be i'm going to use a tool of stop take five and think before i
react with advice that could be a specific goal my time frame could be i'm going to try this for two
weeks my method of measuring could be to journal at the end of the day was i able to do it or not
and why reassess and journal with curiosity and then at the end of two weeks see what happens so
this more amorphous desire to improve relationship by holding back on giving advice you've given many
times before or giving unsolicited advice can be made very specific by committing to make a
note to yourself every evening was i able to do it or not and why what happened explore it and
then at the end of the two weeks really look at it in a non-judgmental curious way because that's
how we improve and then key number four expect setbacks and have a plan so going back to our
marathon example if you've never run a marathon before and maybe you're a casual jogger and you
decide to take something on like that there's a high likelihood that you might have a setback
you might have an injury some personal issue may come up and interrupt your training program
there may be something that sets you back for a temporary period of time
so if you expect setbacks and then you have a plan for getting yourself back on track
you are much more likely to be successful one of the big problems we have in achieving goals
is that we're absolute in our thinking we think i either do it or i'm a failure and
then if i fail or i have a little bit of a slip or a little bit of a setback boom see told you i'm a
failure might as well not even try let's tackle another amorphous goal of i'd like to improve
my marriage or my relationship with my primary partner very common goal many people would like
to do that what do we have control over and what don't we have control over right how do we focus
on what we can control and let go of their response or whether they're changing or not
so to focus on what you can change now one way to make this specific would be to think about
what's a common complaint of your partner if your partner is complaining that you don't help around
the house more a specific thing you could do would be to sit down with your partner and ask
them what is it they would like to do and see if you can negotiate something that's reasonable and
then make an effort to do it right so a specific goal would be to sit down have that conversation
and then out of that conversation you could come up with a plan for two weeks where you actually
write into your calendar i will do the dishes at this hour i will do the laundry on this day so you
can actually put it in as a plan at the end of two weeks you can reassess how'd you do how does your
partner feel that would be a wonderful thing to do if that's something your partner complains about
and actually there is a great book there's a great resource on this so you could also just set a goal
of i'm going to read this book because the book the five love languages by gary chapman i'll show
you here i do have it right here it's a wonderful book about how we all speak in different love
languages what means love to me might be different than what means love to you and learning to speak
in our partner's love language super helpful for relationships so again these are just some ideas
about how to take an amorphous concept and make it very specific measurable attainable relevant
time-bound and focused on what you can control tied to your values short time frames with
reassessment and having a plan for setbacks so these are my four keys for setting smart
goals for personal development reasons to help you achieve success and these are also the ways
to begin to build new habits so one thing i love about coaching is that it is very focused on goals
and making progress and when we can set smart goals and we can attain them it's very motivating
that's why the short time frames the attainability we keep moving forward and i mentioned that i do
have a coaching program and it's called roadmap to joy and authentic confidence and it's really about
rewiring what's happening in here so you can live a life of more joy and self-confidence it's
about transforming those negative core beliefs and moving from limiting beliefs to productive beliefs
moving away from negative self-talk towards self-compassion moving from worry and stress
to mindfulness and i base this program on my 20 years of helping people live more joyful lives on
what works what really helps people shift so just so you know this is a coaching program this is
not therapy it's coaching so it focuses on goals and actionable steps and there is group coaching
twice a month the program provides support and accountability the course is laid out in a private
course site with pre-recorded videos and i also do some live videos specifically for the people
in the program so if you have a serious interest in this program please review the landing page and
i will link that below and if you'd like to have a conversation with me about whether the program
is a fit or not you can book a fit conversation and there's a link to book that conversation on
the landing page for the program but in general i just encourage you to use this technique of smart
goals in your personal life to move yourself towards more joy self-compassion peacefulness
and self-confidence so if you've liked this video please do give it a like subscribe to
my channel if you are not already subscribed and i look forward to seeing you the next time