M|A|S|T|E|R Your Goals

Why Set Goals?

“You need a plan to build a house.
To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal.” (Zig Zaglar)

If you don’t set goals. then you’re are almost certainly going to find yourself working hard to fulfil someone elses’ goal. Is that really what you want?

Successful people set goals. Elite athletes, exceptional entrepreneurs and leaders of large corporations all set goals.

Setting goals will get you off “auto-pilot”.
Setting goals will mean you take charge of your life.
Setting goals will give you a long-term vision and short-term motivation.

But you need something more than S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Sadly,setting goals in itself isn’t enough. Just take new year’s resolutions as an example, the website Statistics Brain has good statistical evidence that shows just setting goals isn’t a guarantee of success. .

Nearly 60% of Americans set goals at new year - resolutions. And we know that we’re keen on them in the UK too. The main areas of goal setting are Personal Development, Health / Weight, Financial and Relationships - so these aren’t trivial things set on a whim..

Yet nearly 1/4 of people will have abandoned their goal within a week, 1/3 within two weeks and after six months, less than a half of people are still working on their goal.

So clearly, you need to do a little more than just set a goal. At this stage many people will tell you to “make your goals S.M.A.R.T.”

But in my experience, S.M.A.R.T. goals don’t work for people either, because:

• not all goals need to be S.M.A.R.T.
• there’s a lack of clarity about what S.M.A.R.T. means
• making a goal S.M.A.R.T. doesn’t encourage in-depth planning, nor does it lead to a regular process of reviewing your goals.

Not all goals have to be S.M.A.R.T. - in fact I’d say that some goals are better for not being S.M.A.R.T. and certainly for not being specific.

Let me try and explain. Let’s imagine that you dream of writing and publishing a novel. The first emphasis of the S.M.A.R.T. methodology is to make this goal specific, and so you decide on this as a goal - “It’s the 31st July 2022 and I’m just walking away from the party where my first novel has been launched to widespread critical acclaim, and with advance sales of more than 2,000 copies.”

That’s not a bad goal, and it’s ceetainly better than no goal. BUT my issue with this approach, is that it puts too much emphasis on the rational and the logical too soon in the goal-setting process. For goals like this one, which I call a destination goal, I encourage my clients to remain focused on the emotional draw of their goal. To clearly understand why they want to achieve this goal. What matters is what it means to them to achieve it. It is not necessary at this stage to artifically create timescales that may be unrealistically tight, or unnecessarily generous. Destination goals do not need to be specific. Journey goals - the goals that take you each step of the road to achieving your destination goal do - of which more later.

What does S.M.A.R.T. mean? it seems to me that if you ask 10 people what S.M.A.R.T. stands for, you will get at least two, probably three and maybe four or five different variations of the acronym! This can’t be helpful for people, And if A means “achievable” and R means “realistic” what’s the difference between those two things?

Planning and Reviewing - but by far my biggest criticism of S.M.A.R.T. goals is that as a system, it leaves you, the goal setter, with no help or support in the planning process, and has no helpful guidelines about reviewing goals. As a consequence, goal-setters set out on their journey ill equipped to tackle the obstacles and barriers they inevtiably encounter on the way.

A system that leads you to complete M|A|S|T|E|R|Y of your goals

To help you set and achieve the goals that will give you the successful, fulfilled life you seek, you need a system that will consistently help you set compelling. motivating goals, and support you in developing a planning and review process that is both robust enough to keep you on track, and flexible enought to deal with the challenges that you will iinevitably face on your jouney.

As a result of my own experience and that of my clients, I’ve developed the goal M|A|S|T|E|R|Y system. Whether you work with me on the “Jump-Start” package or on one of my Coaching “Main Courses” you’ll learn to use and benefit from the goal M|A|S|T|E|R|Y system.

“Jump-Start is a great value package that’s an affordable, straightforward introduction to coaching and goal M|A|S|T|E|R|Y. Over 3 hours of one-to-one time with me, material to help you start the process and to follow the system - all for just £70!!

My Coaching “Main Courses” “In-Sight”, “Accelerate”, Breakthrough” and “Far-Sight” also have goal M|A|S|T|E|R|Y at their heart.

Click on the links to find out more and book an introductory session with me.
Goal M|A|S|T|E|R|Y really is the “smart” thing to do!!

Andy Smith Changesmith Coaching