By Jake Bekemeyer – Gleaners Nutrition Education Team
Setting goals can seem daunting. Making changes can feel intimidating, difficult, time-consuming, and exhausting. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
What is a SMART Goal?
These feelings can stem from setting unrealistic goals. These goals are either too lofty, aiming at something out of control, or unclear in their intentions.
The SMART Goal model is designed to make what could be daunting goals feel achievable and exciting.
The “S” stands for specific. The goal you set shouldn’t be to do “more” or “less” of something. You should have a very clear and defined objective.
This leads us to “M,” which stands for measurable. If you don’t have a way to measure your progress, how can you know when you achieved your goal?
The “A” stands for action based, meaning you need to be able to achieve your goal through your actions. Don’t set goals outside of your domain. There are so many things out of our control, so make sure you work on things that are in it.
“R” stands for realistic. Even if it feels small, it’s a success. Use the momentum to build up to bigger goals over time but start with goals you feel you’re likely to achieve!
And finally, the “T” represents the goal having a time frame. This ties in with measurability as well, as providing a time frame for yourself allows you to reset and reframe if things don’t go as planned, and also allows you to scale up if the goal you set feels to easy.
Why is it effective?
This method is effective because it puts making changes that could seem difficult into a very manageable perspective. If your goal is, for example, to “eat fewer sweets,” it is likely to be difficult. But if we apply the SMART method to this goal, it could look something like this: “I will choose a healthy snack instead of my normal sweets three times this week.”
If that’s too easy, make it five times! If you find yourself struggling, lower the number of days, or try to only limit one specific sweet that you struggle with instead of all of them. Then, when you get comfortable there, move on up!
Give it a try!