#goal setting

so SMART is an acronym, it stands for

Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-Specific

Specific You don't want your goal to be too vague or else it will be harder to accomplish/stick to it In group therapy we started by thinking of the thing we wanted the goal to be about, then made a more specific version of it

for example: I want to eat better, is a good starting spot but also vague. In what way do you want to eat "better?" What do you want to do specifically to better your diet? Maybe you can make your goal to eat more vegetables or cut out some of the sugar in your diet

Measurable You goal should be measurable in some way, that way you can actually keep track of how often you work toward your goal and when you meet it

for example: one of my goals was to walk more. So I set a goal to walk for 30 minutes 3 days a week. I can measure how long I walk each day and how many days a week I meet that 30 minute goal

Achievable You want your goal to be something that you can reasonably accomplish at your current baseline. You want your betterment to be in smaller steps to make is easier for you to build up to bigger goals.

An example my therapist gave was New Year's resolutions, and how someone who never works out may make their resolution to go to the gym every day of the week for an hour each day. This is too big of a jump compared to their baseline of never working out. All it will do is leave them sore and not wanting to continue. You want the goal to be something you can manage, and it's okay to adjust your goal if you find it's too easy or hard to accomplish at your current baseline

Relevant This one's pretty simple, you want your smart goal to be relevant to what you want to achieve. If your goal is to get 8 hours of sleep each night, then making a goal to watch TV is exactly relevant to that sleep goal

Time-Specific give yourself a deadline for your goal. This will also give you a good point to check if your goal is achievable because you can see how well you did in say 1 week or 1 month of working toward it. In my group therapy sessions we set our goals to be a week long, but you can make them longer if need be.

Sometimes the steps of the SMART goal can act as a checklist

as an example, I had a goal sleep goal. I set my goal go to bed at 10:00 PM and wake up at 8:00 AM

This goal was Specific, as it had a specific start and end time it was Measurable, again because of the specific start and end time it was Achievable for me because I had been used to going to bed at 11-12 and waking up at 8-9 so it was a manageable change It was Relevant because sleep is sleep and it was time-specific because it had a specific start and end time