S.M.A.R.T Goals that Stick (Halloween Edition)

It’s spooky season, and one thing that scares us the most is setting a ton of elaborate, exciting goals that will genuinely move us forward, and not sticking to them, leaving them in the graveyard of broken dreams. 

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but you get the point. If you’re also afraid of leaving your dreams behind and not achieving your goals, follow these tips and you’ll be on your way to success.

You’ve probably heard the term S.M.A.R.T Goals at some point in your professional career, but what really is a S.M.A.R.T. goal and how can you stick to it?

A S.M.A.R.T goal is a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. We use S.M.A.R.T goals as a framework to make sure we really know what we want to accomplish, and it gives us ways to make sure we can actually accomplish it. 

The first step in making you S.M.A.R.T. goal is to make sure it isn’t too broad. You want your goal to be something you can concretely look at your progress and see how much of it you can genuinely accomplish. You want to be sure you personally are able to solve, have, or achieve this goal; is it attainable?  Is it realistic? Obviously you want this goal to be something that is actually able to happen in real life.

Finally, you want to make sure all of your goals and your deliverables on your way to your goals have due dates, otherwise there’s no accountability, there’s no end or direction or time that you’re abiding to.

The most common mistake I see is entrepreneurs who set a goal, or create a very broad goal, one day and then they walk away and forget about it just a few days, weeks, or even months later. They might get inspired, they might write it down, and they never revisit it. 

S.M.A.R.T goals keep you focused. They give you a more consistent way to track your progress. Setting a goal, then not checking in on your goal, not tracking your progress toward your goal, or not looking at that goal every day delays your progress toward actually achieving what you’re looking to accomplish.

What happens when you stop tracking your goal or working on it daily? You forget about it! You don’t make any forward movement towards it, and ultimately, you’re not seeing the end result you are looking for. 

Don’t be so hard on yourself, though…it’s so common! We all have so many goals. What makes the difference is this one accountability question; “What’s your consistency toward actually making them happen?"

We get asked a lot what our best hack is for sticking to our goals? 

Putting a team in place is a HUGE hack for goals. Having a team in place means there is someone outside of you holding you accountable to what you say you’re going to do. 

When it’s just on us by ourselves, it’s easy to forget or let ourselves off the hook. 

When you have a team of people, we’re more inclined to set regular meetings where you have a tangible progress report. You have someone else to check in with to make sure you are moving in the right direction.

Here’s where it gets spooky. 

When we ghost our own goals we stay stagnant. 

What happens when you leave all your dreams behind? You don’t actually end up accomplishing them. 

The same goes for your goals. When you ghost your goals, you give up on yourself. You never really get the opportunity to achieve. You never get the opportunity to work hard toward something that is meaningful to your progress and growth.

You lose out on a little piece of your happiness, fulfillment and success. 

Goals are like the boogie man. While you’re not looking at them, they’re under your bed looking at you, and they don’t go away. We have them in the back of our mind and they just haunt us when we’re not doing anything to move them forward. 

It’s not until you spend time with that monster and really getting comfortable with it that it’s not so scary anymore. 

You spend time looking at it. You spend time chipping away at it. You spend time conquering it, one step at a time, until it’s finally something you feel proud to have accomplished, like scaring the boogie man out from underneath your bed. 

Are you confused around how to set a goal and stick to it? Set up a consultation call and we’ll help you take the first step.