How you set your goals is what sets you up to actually achieve them! In other words, if you don’t set your goals in a way that will lead you to success, then you’re setting yourself up to fail. This article will tell you exactly how to achieve your goals and set them the right way!

Our goals list usually looks something like this below:

• Save money
• Get more organized
• Start eating healthy
• Lose 20 lbs.

It’s a great starting point to list goals this way. But we need to write goals in a way that has an immediate plan to follow them!

For Example

Say I set a goal of “saving money.” Just saying I need to “save money” has no specific plan behind it and is very vague.

How am I going to save the money? What area of our spending needs to be budgeted better? Am I setting aside extra money in a separate bank account to save? What are we saving for? New car? Paying off debts in a specific order?

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We need to set SMART goals, which means:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Reasonable
• Timely

Using the SMART goal method increases your chances of actually achieving your goals and bring clarity to what you’re wanting most in life. This enables you to focus your efforts and make better use of time and resources.

As you can see, there is a lot more that should be going into how you set every single goal, to insure you are headed down a path that eventually leads to success in you meeting them!

But goal setting isn’t just about getting specific. Being specific is actually only the first step in setting SMART goals!

Set goals you’ll actually meet!

Step 1

Being specific with your goal setting will help clarify your ideas and help focus your efforts in the right direction. Try asking yourself these “W” questions:

• What do I want to accomplish?
• Who else is involved?
• When do I want to have achieved this goal?
• Why is achieving this goal important to me?
• Which resources are involved in achieving this goal?

Step 2

Having measurable elements of your goal is important to be able to track your progress and recognize your achievements! Ask yourself these questions:

• How much?
• How many?
• How will I know I achieved the goal?

For example

Say my goal is to save $4,000 this year. Once I have $4,000 set away in a separate savings account, I will know I achieved my goal of saving money!

A measurable goal doesn’t always have to include numbers. As long as there is a measurable element that will tell you when you have achieved your goal!

Step 3

A key part of having a SMART goal is coming up with an action plan. To create an actionable and attainable goal, you should ask yourself:

• How can I accomplish this goal?
• What steps do I need to take to achieve the goal?

When creating your action plan, it’ll be easier to set three steps you can take to accomplish your goal. Continuing with my example of saving money, here are three example steps to meet my goal of saving $4,000.

• Set $300 aside for savings each month for a year
• Limit eating out
• Cancel 1 monthly subscription and put that extra monthly money towards my goal

Making sure your goal is something that you are actually in control of is important too. For example, if your goal is to “get a raise” this year, that might be difficult since you don’t control your paycheck!

Step 4

How realistic is your goal? What constraints could prevent you from reaching your goal? Setting a goal that is too extreme may leave you frustrated and discouraged. I have some more questions for you. Ask yourself:

• Do I have the resources I need to achieve this goal?
• What constraints do I have? Financial or time constraints?

Continuing with the money saving goal, I would ask myself “do I have the means to save that much money each month?” or “do we need to find additional income streams to be able to afford setting away that much money?”

Step 5

A goal without a time limit will make procrastinating way too easy. If there is no due date for your goal, what is going to make you want to work on it today? Keep yourself accountable by setting a specific time limit for your goal.

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