In order to achieve success it is imperative to set S.M.A.R.T. goals.
This week at the Thrivetime Business Coach Show I listened to an older podcast of Clay’s from the beginning of this year. In this podcast Clay interviewed Steve Currington and talked about Steve’s success. During the interview Clay broke down why setting S.M.A.R.T goals is so critical to achieving success. Few people achieve their goals, even fewer people set goals to begin with.
S.M.A.R.T. goals start with being specific. A business coach goal must be specific in order to be achievable. If I said I had a goal of being a better person the first follow up question would be what does that mean? Let’s change the goal to being early to all appointments and events. Now the goal is specific and has a clear meaning that I can take action to and achieve the goal.
The next step after creating a specific goal is to make the goal measurable. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. A goal doesn’t get met overnight and ta-da you become instantly early, everywhere, all the time. To hit a goal takes incremental changes to your current daily habits in order to grow to meet the goal. Maybe the measure is a 90 day deadline, in 90 days I am expecting my goal of being early all the time to be met.
Having an actionable goal is a difficult aspect to achieving the dream. Most people love to have new ideas but rarely implement any change due to the lack of discipline and of actionable tasks related to the goal. This is why the third step to creating S.M.A.R.T. goals is to make the goal actionable. My goal of being early all the time requires me to first start my day on time. Invest in several loud alarm clocks and set out my outfit the night before are two actions I can take during the day to move the needle on completing my goal.
The next two steps in achieving goals are to make them realistic and time sensitive. If I set my goal to forever eradicate poverty, that would be considered an unrealistic goal. Jesus told us in Matthew 26:11 “For you always have the poor with you…” Now that God told us we will always have the poor it is understood eradicating poverty is not realistic. However, setting loud alarm clocks, preparing the next day’s outfit, and leaving 15 minutes earlier than necessary are realistic ways to arrive early to every appointment.
Now to make the goal time sensitive is our last step and as Clay says “A goal is a dream with a deadline”. The reason for making goals time sensitive is to set a due date, a day that the goal must be met, when this step is not done many people run into the happy-hoper mentality and begin to drift away from their goals. Even better, many people push off their goals, as there is no sense of urgency thus creating a never reaching end in sight. It is absolutely imperative to stay on track and have an end date to your goal.
S.M.A.R.T. goals led Steve Currington to go from a startup to a two hundred fifty thousand dollar a year business. Many other business coach have gone up the path to creating time and financial success for themselves by creating specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time sensitive goals and diligently making the necessary decisions and trade offs to reach their goal. It is 100% possible for anyone willing to buckle down and focus on their goals to achieve them, it is 100% not possible for the “next year”, “not now but one day” sayers to ever get anywhere in life. Choose to set S.M.A.R.T. goals for yourself this year and you will be shocked and how realistic living the life you want to live is.
