Today we’re going to review what Smart Goals actually are and how you can make yours work for your business. So, what is a smart goal? Are you using them in your business? First, let’s find out what the acronym S.M.A.R.T. is all about then we’ll see how you can use them in your business.
When making goals, it’s important to learn about the acronym S.M.A.R.T. It can help you make better goals. Each letter stands for a different area of the goal. If you create a smart goal, you have created a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Reasonable, and Timely. Using SMART goals can set you up for success in your goal setting. So, how do you do that?
Let’s see how below:
S – Stands for specific, which means that your goal needs to be spelled out very precisely. Using language that leaves no doubt as to what the goal is, why you want to achieve the goal, and how you will get it is very important. If you are not able to be detailed in your description of the goal, it will be hard to meet it. Take the time to do this part right.
M – Stands for measurable, which means that you should be able to use this as a metric for which to determine success. If your goal can’t be quantified, then it’s not a full goal and you won’t know how to tell when you’ve succeeded. An example of a measurable goal is something like: “I want to add 100 dollars per week of income to our bank by writing five 500-word articles each week for a life coach.”
A – There are different things that “a” can stand for but it’s usually actionable, assignable, or achievable. The preference to really get something good done is to make your goal actionable, meaning something where you can do something for each day that will eventually result in an accomplished goal. Goals should also be achievable or you will only get frustrated. Be accurate about the time it takes to reach a goal, and what actions it takes to get there. Also, know who will be responsible for doing it.
R – This can stand for realistic or relevant, and either or both are important and are true. If you want your goal to succeed, it should most certainly be something that is realistic or you will fail. It should also be relevant to your life’s vision and match your values.
T – Various authors refer to the “T” in the S.M.A.R.T. acronym as time-bound, timely or trackable. All of these t’s are important parts of the goal-creating and setting process. If you don’t set a time limit and you can’t track what is happening, your goal will be hard to quantify or show as achieved.
Whichever words you use to help you craft your goals, the important thing is that you need to have a process to help you make smart goals. Smart goals are goals that you follow through on achieving and know when you’ve met them.
There are many tools out on the market you can use to help you create your goals. Below, we’ll discuss a few of them and how they can help you achieve your business goals.
Goal Setting Tools
You can use old-fashioned paper and pen to make and set your goals, but what’s the fun in that? Today, there are so many wonderful online tools and software that can help make goal-setting fun and easy. When something is fun and easy, you’re more likely to stick to it long enough to actually achieve the success you desire.
1. Milestone Planner – Join the thousands of organizations who have already discovered the power of Milestone Planner, the powerfully simple way to build and track plans. From strategic planning to managing the tactical things that need to get done, Create a timeline, set milestones, maybe even invite your team, and start making progress today.
2. Mint – If you need to get control over your finances, and want to set up goals such as establishing a six-month emergency savings account, starting a business, and other goals, you can use this software to track your financial success and projections.
3. Basecamp – This is really a project management system, but any goal has to have actionable steps involved or milestones and tasks to take to reach success. You can use Basecamp for any type of actionable steps and it will even email you a reminder to do the task. This can work with your business life or personal life.
4. Google Calendar – Where were we before Google Calendar came alone? Unorganized, for sure. This is such a handy calendar that you can use for the most important areas of your life. Be it family, personal, financial, or physical – you can set your goals and work your way back inserting actionable steps and tasks to do each day. You can then let it email you a daily task list so you never leave anything out.
5. VisonBoard.me – This is basic vision board software that you can use to create your vision board and then print it out. You can also use something like Pinterest to create a vision board if you need to be fancier about it. It’s fun to create a vision board, and paste it on your wall, fridge, or in public so that you can see the reality of your dreams in person.
6. Lifetick – If you want very in-depth goal-setting software, this is it. It helps you traverse the four important areas where you should be setting goals and then view how they overlap and work with each other. This software helps you define your core values, and develop S.M.A.R.T. goals as well as track everything.
7. GoalsOnTrack – This software is a lot like Lifetick but has features that help you “chunk down” any goal into reasonable and easy-to-follow steps. Their whole idea is that you want to do less but get more. This software’s features encompass the 80/20 rule and put it to work for goal setting and achievement.
8. Goalscape – If you like to visualize your goals in pictures, charts, and graphs then you might like Goalscape. You’ll create a kind of wheel with your goal in the middle and everything you need to do to reach the goal will circle it. So you can see it in one glance.
9. Smart Goals Templates – If you like templates, these are some free goal-setting templates that are based on filling in the blanks for your goals. They will help you go over the various goals-setting steps needed to achieve results in both your personal life and career and business life.
10. Fingerprint for Success – Fingerprint for Success is a professional & personal development platform for individuals & teams to make amazing things happen at work and in life! Coach Marlee is the world’s first artificially intelligent coach! Marlee specializes in developmental and performance coaching. Based on decades of evidence-based research into human development.
Whichever type of software (if any) you feel you need to use for goal setting and goal realization is up to you. The important thing is that you visualize the results of any goal, write it out, and then take steps toward achieving the goal.
Looking for help with YOUR Goals? I’d be happy to help you. Contact me here
Does your professional success require personal confidence? Nothing succeeds like success, right? Sure, I guess so you might say.
However, true success comes from confidence, and confidence, in turn, comes from success. They each revolve around the other in the ultimate symbiotic relationship.
Your Professional Success is your Foundation
This is not a “what came first, the chicken or the egg?” kind of proposition. Confidence definitely precedes success in the order of appearance. That’s because the quiet assurance of true confidence, as opposed to mere cockiness, serves to lay the foundation for reaching a goal.
In this way, confidence is more of an outward manifestation of an inward persona than it is a pose or an affectation. Cockiness, on the other hand, is simply an outward shield that masks inward insecurity.
Do you hear that?
Confidence in YOURSELF
As a business owner, you need to be confident in yourselfand your product or service. People react positively to a confident person, especially if that confidence is real and a part of that person’s soul. In order to develop this type of true confidence, there are several things that you can do.
Professional Success is About Confidence
First, always remember that confident people are able to take a stand on an issue or a decision not because they think they are right, but because they are not afraid to be wrong.
Because they see a difficult situation as an opportunity for growth. Finding the right solution to a problem is more important than being right. Therefore, if they are wrong they will be the first people to admit it and move on.
Confident People and Professional Success
Confident people often listen far more often than they talk. They are more interested in hearing different information and opinions than they are in broadcasting their own. They also are never afraid to admit fallibility and ask for help. Did you realize this part of the equation? Yes, No?
They know that other people’s knowledge is their greatest strength.
Confidence is Critical to Professional Success
Finally, they understand that success is a team sport. They know that any goal is achieved through the efforts of many, not the will of the few. Therefore, they share the spotlight of success and shine it on others far more than they shine it on themselves.
Journaling is not just for 12-year-old girls! Journaling can be a powerful weapon in your get-it-done arsenal, and it’s easy to do. You can and should put all kinds of things in a goal journal, not just your thoughts and feelings on a given day.
Journaling is just one way of tracking your actions and successes, and yes, even your setbacks and failures. It also keeps your goal right in front of your face so you keep on top of taking action steps each and every day. It keeps all your ideas and revelations in one place so you can go back and review whenever you want. For example, if you are having trouble getting motivated one day because you feel like you’ve been working hard, but making little progress, going back into your goal journal is a wonderful way to help you see that all of those little actions really are paying off in a big way. So what should you keep in your goal journal? Start with these ideas and add to them as you see fit.
Detailed goal--Write down your exact goal in as much detail as possible. Describe it in a way that makes you feel excited about what your life will be like when you achieve your objective.
Your Why--Your Why is the big reason why you want to reach the goal you have defined for yourself. It’s the reason you are willing to take the massive action steps needed to change your life for the better.
Massive action plans and schedule–When you make the plan for how you will go about reaching your goal, write it here. Writing it down is important so that you can track your efforts so you can see what actions are creating the most results.
Braindumps--A brain dump is just a list of actions that you need to take in no particular order. Sometimes all the tasks you need to take build up in your head, making you confused about where you should start and what you should do next.
Prioritize--After you do a brain dump, organize the tasks into a priority list and add them to your daily and weekly to-do lists.
Daily to-do list–Write out your to-do lists here so they are always handy.
Aha’s–As you make massive action, you will have inspiration or aha moments when something becomes clear. Capture those ideas here so that you can refer to them later when you are ready to put them into action.
Journal entries–Yes, you should actually journal. Sometimes there’s nothing better than stream of consciousness writing to help you solve a problem or get your worries off your chest. It’s a therapeutic and inspirational way to work.
You may not have journaled since you were a kid. Or maybe you’ve never tried it and don’t see the point. But, the action of putting pen to paper is an extraordinarily beneficial way to improve your life. Journaling is an effortless way to change your life when nothing is going right. Today’s discussion is about How Journaling Can Change your Life for the Better. So pull up a comfy chair with a cuppa and enjoy today’s read.
Discover what’s important
When you free write, you end up writing about the things that are most important to you. They may be things that you don’t even think of as that important but looking back over your writings later will give you a strong inclination of what you find the most rewarding in your life. For example, if you find yourself coming back to the idea of starting your own business over and over again, it’s obvious that it’s a dream that’s important to you. When your life is in chaos, you have less to lose, and you might decide to go for it and see what happens.
Track successes
We get used to living in a routine and frequently overlook the small actions we make that add up to beneficial changes in our lives over time. Journaling helps us see all the successes we’ve had, even when life isn’t going the way we want it to. Using a journal as a form of tracking our successes can bring us a great deal of comfort when times are tough.
Let go of old emotional blocks
We can share our deepest fears and worries in a journal. When we feel down, we often need a sounding board more than we need advice, and journaling gives us that. We can let out and then let go of past hurts and failures, our needs and wants, without having to tell anyone about them but ourselves. Writing is cathartic and can help us release old emotions and beliefs that are no longer serving us.
Find the answers
People who journal often report that they find the answers to problems within themselves by using journaling to tap into their unconscious. Each of us has the answers to every problem already inside of us and journaling is a way to access those answers in a positive way. It’s amazing how allowing ourselves to be honest and open to our struggles ends up making the answer we’ve been seeking so obvious – it’s all there in black and white.
Encourages creativity
Many people who journal find themselves writing poetry or drawing to express themselves. A journal is a safe place to be creative. There’s no judgment from others, just an open invitation to express ourselves in whatever way comes up. Allowing this creativity to spring forth is another way that our problems get solved because we allow our minds to be in a different, creative space that is open to all possibilities. Are you willing to try it?
In our next article, we’ll be discussing Why Writing Down Your Goals Boosts Your Chances of Success. Make sure you come back to read it.
Expressive journaling can be your road to de-stressing and re-energizing your mind. It can help you declutter your brain and your soul, and help you get feelings out on paper where they can be examined and interpreted. Today’s discussion is all about What is Expressive Journaling?
Do you even know what it is? Journaling like this can help you live more of your life in the moment, as you deal with the past and future in your journal. You’ll feel more secure in your daily life without all that hanging around in your brain, and you’ll find yourself enjoying your days with less worry and pressure.
Here are lots of different types of expressive journals, and each of them can be used exclusively. Or you can mix and match what you want when you want it. We’ll talk about several of the most common types of expressive journals in this article.
Art Journal – Whether or not you are artistically talented, an art journal is an excellent idea if you love to doodle and sketch. What are you feeling? Turn that into a sketch. Draw an outline and then color it in with colored pencils or gel pens. If getting better at art is your goal, make the page opposite your creation where you write about how you feel about what you’ve created and how your progress is coming along.
Gratitude Journal – There’s no better way to increase positive feelings in your life than with a gratitude journal. Each day, reflect on your experiences, what you’re thankful for, and lessons that you want to remember for the future. And then take it a step further and let the people you’re thankful for know about it!
Dream Journal – Each morning, grab your dream journal and write down your dreams from the night before. Leave room after each dream, in case you come back with different insights later on, and you want to record them. Your dreams can tell you a lot about your waking life when they’re interpreted correctly!
Creative Writing Journal – If stories are your thing, try a creative writing journal. Write a short story every day, or challenge yourself to write a short story in just 100, 200, or 300 words. Challenge yourself and hone your skills!
Positivity Journal – Each day, pick something positive that happened that really inspired you. Write about what happened, the people involved, and how it made you feel. This can help you see more positive things in life overall, and helps decrease negativity.
So, don’t overthink your journaling – just get started and try!
We are now beginning our series on the topic of journaling. There will be several articles on the whys and the hows so this will be really interesting You might want to read these all at the same time or even save them in a file you can go back to and read from time to time.
At any rate, this is a topic of discussion and you’ll be happy to know that even the most famous people write in a journal. Try it, you might even like it!
