Mindset Mondays: The Importance of SMART Goals

 

Today’s tip is using GOALS to direct your MINDSET. After all, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Right?

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times, right? Everyone you know — at least all the life coaches and teachers — want you to learn how to make your goals so that they’re manageable and do-able. Learning how to create goals correctly will change your life. 
 
The best-known method for creating goals that you can achieve is the SMART goal method. 
 
The SMART acronym stands for:

• Specific. State what is precisely required to meet your goal. 
• Measurable.  Include a number that enables you to measure the results. 
• Achievable. Set goals that you can realistically accomplish in the time set using the resources and methods you have available. 
• Realistic. The outcome must be truly possible. Some people like to use the word relevant here because the goal must be relevant to the big picture you have in mind. 
• Time-Bound. We all expand our time to match what is allowed, so setting a time limit is essential to realizing your goals. 

You can even expand this acronym to the acronym SMARTER and add two more criteria, if you want to be great at making goals that result in success. These two additional letters stand for “evaluated” and “reviewed,” — which makes sense because the only way you can know for sure if something you do works is to evaluate it and review it. 
 
Once you do that, you can tweak and change things to improve your goal setting for future goals. The practice of using the SMART goal method for all your goal setting needs will improve every time you start setting up your goals and objectives because you’ll be able to use past experiences to guide you. 
 
No matter how small your objective is, try using the SMART goal technique to help you create goals that really can be reasonably met by you.

Mindset Mondays: Practice Positive Thinking

Negative thoughts can affect your ability to see your success — as well as make you feel bad about yourself and the world around you — and can lead to poor choices. Thankfully, you can turn yourself around by focusing on positive thinking.

• Create a Minimum “To Do” List. Each day, look at your calendar and schedule and see what you need to do for the day to be a success — but just for that one day. It shouldn’t be 12 hours of work either. It should be a realistic depiction of the minimum necessary tasks to experience success.

• Keep a Gratitude Journal. Every evening, write down three things you are thankful for in general and for that day. Then, the next morning, read those three things before you start your day. When you focus on the good in your life, you’re going to feel more successful.

• Meditate Daily. Take time out of your day to mediate. You don’t have to meditate for a long time to see results. Just five minutes a day can make a big difference in your mood and your thoughts. You can also meditate in different ways, such as by walking in nature, lying on the living room floor listening to music — or the typical way most people think of it. But clear your mind so you can reset and start fresh.

• Time Limit Your Negativity. When you allow a negative thought to enter your mind, instead of dismissing it, try stopping and doing something else that makes you feel positive. Five minutes watching babies laugh on YouTube can pay off in numerous ways.

• Practice Changing Your Thoughts. When a negative thought enters your mind, you can practice changing it. If you have a negative thought, think it out, and then turn it around to something positive. With practice, the negative thoughts will resolve themselves.

You don’t have to be overly positive for these tactics to work. If you have trouble turning a negative thought into a positive one, use a neutral thought instead. 

Mindset Monday: Take Daily Baby Steps

Happy Mindset Monday! To support your success, I’ll be sharing mindset tips with you on Mondays. Today’s tips are to help you succeed without getting overwhelmed.

When you want to experience success, sometimes looking at the whole project is too overwhelming. However, if you take small steps daily, you’ll meet your goal and it will be less stressful.

This will help you to:

• See things more clearly. The giant goal of building a six-figure career services business can seem daunting, but the smaller goal of getting one new client a week is a lot more do-able, because you can see it happening.

• Increase your focus. It’s easier and more effective to focus on what you can do today, instead of thinking too far ahead. For example, if one of your goals is to write a book, it may seem impossible. Break your goal down to write one chapter a month. You could break it down further into writing 4,000 words a month, or about 1,000 words a week, or 150 words a day.

• Stop procrastinating. Knowing you need to write 150 words to meet your goal is less stressful and easier to imagine than writing 4,000 words in one sitting — so you’re more likely to jump in and get it done.
  

• Lower stress. If the thought of writing a book overwhelms you, it’s okay. You don’t have to focus on the whole project at one time. Instead, focus on writing the chapter outline. Or write 150 words. This will help you complete the work and meet your goal without dreading the task.

• Build confidence. When you take small, daily steps, you’ll be able to start measuring your success within just a couple of weeks. Being able to look back on what you’ve accomplished will build your confidence level. Having more confidence makes it easier for you to envision the big goals you’ve made.
  

• Create habits. Building habits that affect your life today and in the future is the best way to ensure you start reaching the goals you set. Habits work much better for getting things done than trying to motivate yourself or hope for willpower. Those small daily actions end up creating patterns that become habits.
  

It may seem impossible to get big results by taking small steps each day, but you can. For example, if every single day you increase your walking time by just one minute, by the end of the year, you’d be walking six hours a day. (No one needs to walk that much, but it demonstrates just how powerful one minute can become, given enough time!)

Mindset Monday: Envision Your Success

Today’s mindset tips are to help you with visualizing your success.

Most personal success mindset instructions tell you that before you can experience success, you should pinpoint what your vision of success looks like. Take some time to realistically “daydream” about the work you’ll accomplish — and your success.

The main reason you need a vision is because if you don’t know what you want, you won’t recognize it — even if someone handed it to you on a silver platter. 

​To help you visualize the success you want to achieve, try one (or more) of these suggestions:

• Create a vision board. When you’re trying to achieve a goal, use a vision board to help you fully imagine what that success looks like. For example, if you want to build your career services business to six figures, create a vision board depicting what that looks like to help you create the steps to get there.

• Write down your goals. If you don’t want to create a vision board, you can still visualize your success by using very descriptive writing to describe your goals. When you write down a SMART success goal, be very specific about what constitutes success to you.

• Picture your goals being met. When creating your vision board — or writing down each goal — take the time to imagine it in your mind. You may want to consider doing this in a nice, quiet place in your home, where you can relax and/or find inspiration. Allow yourself to pretend you have achieved your goal. Use the following questions to help set the stage for your vision:
• – Where will you likely be when you meet the goal or finish the project?
  – Will someone be there when you achieve the goal? Who?
  – What emotions will you probably feel?
  – What clothing will you be wearing?
  – Who will you call first, and what will you say?

Picture the future — and then work your plan to achieve it!