Achieving Your Goals

88% of people who make resolutions fail at them, largely because they’re not setting goals that are achievable. But it doesn’t have to be that way!  So I wanted to make a quick little post on how to choose goals that are achievable and how to get yourself to follow through on them. 

There are two specific tools that are super helpful in increasing the likelihood that you’ll achieve your resolutions.  You may have seen me talk about them on here before- they’re SMARTER and WOOP.

SMART(ER) is a tool to help you set the right goals for you.  Too often, we set goals like “I’m going to start exercising” or “I’m going to quit going on my phone”.  Those are great in theory, but without an action plan, it’s easy to not follow through.

 SMARTER goals are ones that are:

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).

• If your goal isn’t specific, you won’t be able to focus your efforts or feel motivated to achieve it.

• Try to answer: what do I want to accomplish? Why is this goal important? Who is involved? Where is it located? Which resources or limits are involved?

• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).

• Having measurable goals is important because it allows you to track your progress and stay motivated by seeing how far you’ve come.

• A measurable goal should be one that answers “how much”, “how many” and “how will I know when it’s accomplished”?

• Achievable (agreed, attainable).

• Your goal needs to be realistic in order for you to stay motivated and be successful.  If you’re aiming too high, you’ll become demotivated quickly because it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress.

• An achievable goal requires you to ask “how can I accomplish this goal” and “how realistic is this goal based on other constraints?”

• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).

• Relevant goals are ones that matter to you.  Make sure that these goals are ones that are important to you, not ones that you think you should be pursuing.

• A relevant goal is one that can answer “yes” to the following questions: “does this seem worthwhile?”, “is this the right time?”, “does this match my other efforts/needs?”, “is it applicable in my current socio-economic environment?”

• Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

• Every goal needs a target date so that you have a deadline you can focus on and work toward.

• A time sensitive goal is one that answers “when?”, “what can I do six months from now?”, “what can I do six weeks from now?”, and “what can I do today?”

• Evaluate

• Every day, evaluate how you’re doing on your goals.  Long term goals can be easily ignored if they’re not evaluated every day, and if you don’t evaluate how you’re doing on your goals regularly, you might miss the things that are preventing you from achieving them.

• Readjust

• If you find that your approach isn’t working, you may need to readjust your goals.  That doesn’t mean that you’re failing at your goals or that you should quit; it just means you have to rethink the approach you’re taking.  Maybe the goal isn’t as relevant to you as you thought it would be, or it’s not as realistic as you expected, or your timeline is too short.  Identify which part of your SMARTER goal is tripping you up and readjust it.

The best goals are ones that include trying new things instead of quitting old ones.  Quitting things is hard; learning something new is easier and more exciting.  If you’re looking to quit something, replace it by establishing a new habit that takes its place.  For example, “I’m going to stop going on my phone,” is hard, but “when I feel like going on my phone, I’ll read a book for ten minutes instead” might be easier to maintain.

After you’ve figured out your SMARTER goal, it’s time to WOOP.  WOOP is something like the scientifically proven cousin of “manifesting”.  Just visualizing our goals or positive thinking on its own can be counterproductive, because it fools our lizard brains into believing that we’ve already achieved the goal.  By using the WOOP method, you can prevent that from happening and actually achieve what you want to achieve.

WOOP stands for:

• Wish: Identify a wish that is challenging, yet attainable.  This should be your SMARTER goal.

• Outcome: Imagine the best outcome as a result of your wish (as vividly as possible).  Really daydream about what your life would be like if you achieved your goal.

• Ask yourself, what is the biggest benefit you could receive from achieving this goal?

• Obstacle: Identify and imagine what obstacles will get in the way of your wish.

• What might get in the way?  Thoughts, feelings, beliefs, old behavior patterns, bad habits, social pressure… identify as many as you can, then prioritize their likely they are to happen and how significant they would be if they did happen.

• Plan: Create an if-then plan to overcome the obstacles you identified- “if [obstacle occurs] then I will [plan A].”  Do your best to pick the most effective path you can for each obstacle, and identify a few different plans in case your first plan doesn’t work.

For example, if you wanted to start exercising, your WOOP might look like this:

• Wish: Go on a run 3x/week after school/work for a month.

• Outcome: Better energy, confidence, and health.

• Obstacle: Feeling tired and hungry at the end of the day…Not wanting to go.

• Plan: Pack a snack for the end of the day, and put on gym clothes right when you get home.

Or if you wanted to stop watching TV and read more:

• Wish: Watch only 5 episodes of TV per week, and read when I feel the urge to watch TV for a month.

• Outcome: Learn a lot. Get smarter. Feel better. Enjoy the great ideas. Feel like I’m spending my time wisely.

• Obstacle: Not feeling like it. Preferring to watch TV.

• P: If I catch myself watching TV, then I turn it off and start reading a book instead.

The last thing you can do to increase the chances that you’ll achieve your New Year’s Resolution is to get someone else involved.  Either find a friend who’s setting the same resolution that you are, or tell someone about your goal and ask them to help you achieve it by checking up on you.  It can also be helpful to put money on the line- give money to a friend with the understanding that you’ll get it back on a set date if you’ve achieved your resolution.  If you really want to ensure that you reach your goal, tell your friend that if you fail, they should donate the money to a group or cause that you really hate.

76% of participants who wrote down their goals, actions and provided weekly progress to a friend successfully achieved their goals, compared to that 88% of people who fail at their New Year’s Resolutions that I mentioned earlier.  With just a few small changes to the way you approach setting resolutions, you can greatly increase the chances that you’ll be successful at them.

If you’re making resolutions this year, comment on this post or send in what your resolutions are and how you’re planning to achieve them!