Unsuccessful With The S.M.A.R.T. Goal

There’s one thing that I know for sure. And it’s the fact that I was never a fan of the “S.M.A.R.T. goal method. Why? Well I never liked the term R which represents or stands for “realistic”. I don’t know for sure confidently but I just didn’t like how it tells you to make your goals realistic to our current generation, century and society.

It’s the fact that it tells you to make it things that are possible and that are legal and blah blah blah. So what if anyone in our society believes any goal any human being to have as impossible or unrealistic. I have something to share about that. How did anyone make something happen regardless of any comments, beliefs or any proof stating anything to convince the person otherwise?

They went out in the world and made it happen. They made it a reality by achieving the impossible and doing what society has believed for years or centuries as unrealistic. Who is anyone to say what is realistic in our current generation and century?

You want something new, and something that no one would ever motivate themselves to accomplish, something that anyone in society believe to be impossible and also unrealistic. Well go out there and prove society wrong. No one has ever challenged the theory of what is and what isn’t possible except for those who were willing to take the risks that were involved and to prove their main message clear to our society.

So you want to do something that everyone else in society wouldn’t even consider challenging themselves to, prove them wrong and do all that you need to do to succeed in proving what should be labeled as possible and realistic. Versus those that are actually labeled as impossible and unrealistic. If you want to change the present and future, stop living up to the voices of society and follow your own voice. You want to achieve and live in the life of the possible and realistic (which society labels both as impossible and unrealistic)? Start making a plan that’s realistic to your own belief system and lifestyle and be the change you want to create in our society!

Believing in your dreams is one thing but believing in yourself is part of it and is not one ounce easy to achieve and succeed in doing. The part about believing in your dreams is the part where society convinces you of what is and what isn’t “realistic” and so many others in the professional world and view of dreams, they look at the S.M.A.R.T. goal method. The R represents for “realistic” and society believes strongly enough that if something that we want to achieve in life, to make sure it matches with society’s realities.

That to me just sounds screwed up and wrong on enough levels to which I believe on my points of view are. For years, I believed in many dreams and I really wanted to achieve them. But society including what I was taught and reminded enough in school was the S.M.A.R.T. goal method is the way to follow with making our dreams and goals happen. And if we aren’t giving enough details including all that meets with the standards of the method itself, we are told to include more details and the details that are “realistic”. And so for years long enough, I believed them because I knew I had to because of what I was taught and told, and the other was because I didn’t want to risk being different and achieving what society labels as “unrealistic”.

But in the past few months, I’ve been thinking and have read the chapter in the “It Starts With Passion: Do What You Love And Love What You Do” book on how the S.M.A.R.T. goal method doesn’t work. I’m gonna share a part of the chapter that really gets towards the point i’m trying to make here on how and why the S.M.A.R.T. goals don’t work.

“After 25 years of working with people and their goals, I believe the missing piece of the puzzle is the emotional connection, the true goal alignment that comes when you know how you want to feel, you think about what you want to achieve and then you do what’s necessary to make it come true.

Why would logical, intelligent people set a goal that is important to them, that will bring them a better result, only to procrastinate over taking the action, and have to negotiate with themselves each step of the way?”

And I believe so far with what has been covered on why I believe that the S.M.A.R.T. goals don’t work is going quite well. Next I’m gonna continue sharing the rest of the chapter on this topic in the book: “It Starts With Passion: Do What You Love And Love What You Do”.

Traditionally people approach goals like like: they set the goal, take action to achieve the goal, achieve a result, then experience a feeling – joy, success, satisfaction or accomplishment. It looks like this:

1. Goal: I want to lose 10 kilos.
2. Action: I exercise more, eat less, take vitamin supplements and limit alcohol consumption over the next two months.
3. Result: I do this for long enough and consistently enough to lose the 10 kilos.
4. Feeling: I feel more energized, have more confidence and experience a sense of success.

Now this is logical. However a logical connection does not compel us to take actions! It validates the action, but ti doesn’t motivate us. The challenge is that because we don’t achieve immediate success or we make only limited progress, we begin to question the benefit of making the effort. Our subconscious plants seeds of doubt because our focus is on losing 10 kilos, not the feeling we can experience moment by moment, day by day. We fall into the trap of focusing on the goal or outcome, rather than the activity that carries us towards our goal.

So why don’t we invert this model and start with how we want to feel? Each of us is driven at any one time by one to three emotions.

Let’s start with how you want to feel, whether that is across your lifetime, this year, this week or just today. Then let’s determine what action you have to take today to achieve that feeling. From there, you gain a result that leads, step by step, towards the achievement of your overall goal.

Feeling

Let’s look at it in real-life terms. Let’s say you want to feel energized. It is important to you to feel you have the vitality to achieve all the things that are important to you and still have energy to burn. You have determined that being energized is one of your driving emotions. Later I will show you how to determine your top three driving emotions – it is such a simple yet profound process.

Action

You decide that to feel energized today you need to drink two litres of water, exercise for an hour, meditate for 15 minutes, eat the healthiest food option for you (whether that is a protein breakfast, three serves of vegetables, or fruit and nuts for snacks during the day) and achieve three personal or career objectives each day.

Results

By taking this action you achieve two results: you have a sense of achievement today because you have completed all five tasks (for most of them); and you feel more energized. How could you not feel better and more energized if you have completed these five tasks?

Goal

Let’s say you were able to complete these five tasks six days out of seven for two months. Do you think you would be closer to your goal of losing 10 kilos? Would you have created greater forward momentum along the way? Would you enjoy self-confidence and a greater sense of self-worth? Would you have greater energy? Would you feel more inclined to keep up this ritual because you are making progress towards your goal?

The real value is that you have stopped focusing on what you are not achieving, letting go of the pressure that an unfulfilled goal can create in your mind, and started to focus on what you can do today. We all feel better when we feel like we are making progress!

Think progress, not perfection.

“It is not about being perfect; it is about making progress.”

So what I’m trying to say here more further in detail is that striving for perfection is overrated and that if our goals aren’t realistic or perfect, it’s not the way to pursue any goal because society and other researchers believe that the S.M.A.R.T. goals is the way to progress in achieving your goal and the result/outcome you want to gain.

Perfection is something in our society that has ruined and harmed so many of our citizens self worth and mental health, it’s become too far and no matter how deep we are in anything, we can always get out. Though it may be hard to believe for those who are deep in their hole with depression or any other mental illness.

If we want to achieve any goal or dream of ours, don’t listen to society, listen to what is covered in the chapter I just included above about the new method or strategy to pursue in making your dreams and goals possible and achievable. Listen to your heart, your brain can be messed with and tricked easily. Your heart and your gut are never wrong with whatever it wants you to do and pursue. If you want to do something badly enough, you’ll do whatever you have to do to make it a reality.

As quoted in Tomorrowland: “Let’s imagine: if you glimpse the future, you were frightened by the future, what would you do with that information? You would go to politicians, captains of industry: how would you convince them with data, facts. Good luck. Any facts they won’t challenge, they keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in. But what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news right in everyone’s head.

The probability of widespread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop was to show it. To scare people straight. What reasonable human being would be galvanize by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved. To save civilization, I would show its collapse. But how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom?

They gobbled it up in a chocolate eclair. They didn’t fear their demise, they repackaged it. It can be enjoyed as video games, tv shows, books, movies, the entire world, whole-heartedly embraced the apocalypse. But sprinted towards with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile your earth was crumbling all around you. Civil ten years epidemics of obesity and starvation, explain that one?

Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, the algae glooms, all around you, the calamine canaries are dead and you won’t take the hint. In every moment there is a possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it, you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality. So you dwell on this whole terrible future, you resign yourselves to it. One reason because that future doesn’t ask anything of you today. So yes you saw the iceberg, you were on the Titanic, but you all just steered for it full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink. You gave up. It’s not the monitor’s fault, that’s yours.