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Learning to set goals can change your life. There are simple techniques that can make all the difference to success. Here I outline the SMART system of goal setting and add a little extra of my own.

Everyone sets goals whether they realise it or not: how you are going to get promotion, your plan to lose some weight or get fit, preparing for your next holiday etc.

However we all know that just setting the goal is not enough. Many people have good intentions and make good plans but goals and plans have to be acted upon to be of any use and few of us are successful at completing our goals.

Your first aim must be to get used to setting goals and then working to achieve them.

You can do this by setting a simple goal that you know you can complete. Although this goal is simple it should still be something that you want to do. An ideal would be a small goal that might lead you towards a longer term goal.

But what if I don’t have a long term goal?

From the beginning you need to get used to having long term goals. Think for a moment about what your ideal life would be like if there were no limitations. What amount of exercise would you do? What kind of house would you live in? What would your children (if you have any) be like? How much money would you earn?

With that image of a perfect life in your mind pick one thing that you could do to get you closer to it. Remember this is a simple thing, an easy thing to do.

For this guide we are going to take the example of someone who wants to get fitter. They have not exercised for the last 10 years (a checkup at the Doctors shows they are alright to proceed) but they used to use a gym regularly. We might assume that the best thing to do would be to join a gym and get on with it.

However this approach has several disadvantages:

• The time they used to devote to exercise is now spent on other things.
• They will be tempted to perform at the level they used to which will probably fail and lead them to believe they cannot succeed.
• It will cost money which if they don’t succeed will make them feel guilty.

So – very sensibly – they make their first aim is to get fit enough to start using exercise equipment. The first hurdle is to allocate time to the task (this is perhaps one of the most critical things to do and also one of the hardest in any goal setting).

So the goal is starting to take shape. They will exercise for a certain time each time (the ideal would be to allocate some time that will later work with going to the gym but they must start small). We will continue with this later.

So in the first steps we take things easy and concentrate on simple goals that teach us the process of goal setting and doing, and which also moves us towards our greater goal.

If you are still having trouble with this then take a look at the purpose and vision setting articles on this blog.

So now I have a goal is there something I can do to make sure I don’t fail?

One of the secrets to goal setting is the way in which we set the goal.

I’ve seen many different forms of goal setting and many of them are very good. One of the best is what is known as the SMART system.

 The SMART system is widely used and is simple to remember and so is a good basis of any goal setting system. SMART is an acronym (each letter of the word stands for something) by the way.

S = Sustainable
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

Because there are certain other things that I think are important I’m going to add on what I call the three Rs later but first lets get used to SMART (you may come across different interpretations of the acronym and this does not matter – what matters is having a system that works).

Let’s take a look at each letter in more detail.

Sustainable
Any time you set a goal you must make sure that it is something you can keep going with over the period of time you set yourself. You must never ever set goals that are too hard for you to do. You do need an element of challenge in each goal but if the challenge is too great you will fail.

Using our person who wants to get fitter from above they would be setting themselves up for failure if they set themselves too great a challenge (especially for the first goal). Let’s say they are going to start at the weekend when they have two whole days to exercise so the goal reads:

I will walk for two hours every day.

They manage Saturday and Sunday but on Monday they are tired after work and can’t face two hours of walking and so they decide to have a break that day thinking that they will do better tomorrow.

However they are still tired the day after and this is true for the whole and so by the end of the week they have failed. This sense of failure makes them think that they will never succeed.

The goal was not sustainable!

Instead they would be better off setting themselves the challenge of say 20 minutes of exercise every day. This is not a long time and won’t be enough for a trip to the gym but it gets them into the habit of using time for exercise.

Measurable
You need to be able to measure your success at your goal. This is vital for motivation and success. So how will you know that you are succeeding at your goal? What can you use to measure your progress.

A great number of people make goals that say things like “I will try to be happier” or “I will try to work harder”. How will they know if they are happier? How will they know if they are working harder.

This is a trap many parents fall into when they say to their children – “I wish you would behave better when we are out” – but never tell their children what behaving better means so next time they get the same behaviour.

You need a way to measure your progress. Don’t write goals with “be happier” type sentences in instead try to work out what makes you happy and write goals with those things in them.

Whilst I’m on the subject never use words like “try” or “attempt”. These words let you off the hook and are impossible to measure. You are not going to try you are going to do.

For our example of the get fitter person above the measure might be the time spent exercising e.g. 20 minutes is the measure of success. Or perhaps it could be a distance as a measure. As long as there is some way to measure we can see progress and seeing progress is one of the main elements of motivation.

Attainable
Any goal must be attainable – never set yourself a goal that you could never actually do.

For instance if you have your 40th birthday in 10 days time and you want to lose 60 pounds before you are 40 – short of a drastic operation this is not going to happen.

Setting a goal that can not be reached will only make you feel bad and you will lose motivation before you even start. Many people set themselves impossible tasks and then never get started on the path to success because they give in before they even start.

For our example of the get fitter person. If our goal setter said they were going to run 15 miles a day for the rest of their life from tomorrow (without any exercise for 10 years remember) they would be setting themselves up for failure. Such a goal would not be attainable.

Realistic
This one is similar to the attainable but it gets more personal. Can you realistically see yourself doing it? When you set the goal can you realistically do it? If the answer is no then you should not start.

Many people try to set goals that are just too much for them and so they fail. Only you will really know what you can do and so you must be realistic about it. By all means include a challenge (very small at first) but be realistic for you.

Timely
Give yourself a time limit for this and make sure you give yourself time to complete the goal.

If your goal is to run for twenty minutes every day for the rest of your life, you will get fed up after a while and give in. If however you set yourself the challenge of 20 minutes every day for the next week and then its near the end of the week and you feel like giving in you will at least know its only for a few more days.

Having a date and time you can end the goal on can be very important when you need a little help to keep going. When the goal is complete you can always do it again (with a new challenge built in) but if it just goes on for ever you will lose your enthusiasm.

You also need time to complete your goal and giving yourself a time for doing something will help you enormously. Setting a time for having a run will help you do it. If you don’t set a time it’s likely just to get put off until the end of the day when its too late.

Now I’m going to add my three Rs.

R = Resources
R = Review
R = Reward

Resources
Think through what resources you can use to help you accomplish your goal. Are there any people you can turn to for help? Could you get help from a book? Is there a web site that can help you (e.g. bythemethod.com)? Where can you get help? Thinking this through as you write your goal will help you accomplish what you want too.

Review
It is very important to review your goal. You should review it when you have first written it and you should review it regularly when you are doing it. When its first written read it through and ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how committed you are to the goal (where 1 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘out the way I’m on a mission’). If you are anything less than 8 you should ask yourself what it would take to make it a 10 and build this in to your goal.

Reward
How will you reward yourself when the goal is completed. Of course many goals have their own reward but it is important to acknowledge this and tell yourself what a great job you have done at the end of the goal. If possible reward yourself in some practical way e.g. watch favourite film or go out for coffee or buy something nice. This will then help you to remember that goal setting and doing is good for you and makes you happy.

What if after all this I still can’t stick to my goal?

If at the end of your goal you have not accomplished what you set out to do the problem is not with you (provided you are perpared to put some work in) but with your goal.

Perhaps you set yourself too great a challenge or perhaps you just didn’t have the time. This is when you review the goal and rewrite it and try again. Eventually you will set a goal you can reach and this will spur you on to greater things.

Conclusion

All successful people have one thing in common – they set goals and work to achieve them. Dreams do come true for some through hard work, imagination and perseverance at goal setting and doing.

Your future lies within your own hands do something now to make your own dreams come true.