The Mindset Mentor - How To Set SMART Goals: A Guide To Simple Goal Setting

Starting point is 00:00:00 Thank you. phone and go to however you listen to us, whether that's Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and give this podcast a rating and review. The reason why is because the more positive rating and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms actually show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows this podcast to grow, but also allows us to affect more people's lives. So if you would do that for me, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, we're going to be talking about how to set your goals. Goal setting is a really, really important part, one of the most important parts to achieving the life that you want. But one of the things that I've found is that if you're setting your goals and you've never

Starting point is 00:00:53 really set many goals before, maybe you've just written them down or maybe you've just come up with new years resolutions, is you really have to have a strategy to create your goals, to identify your goals, to plan your goals, and to actually make sure that you achieve your goals. Because all too often we set goals, but we have no strategy behind them. And they're more like a wish if we don't have a strategy. And so to increase the likelihood of achieving our goals, we need to make sure that they're clearly defined. We need to make sure that they're measurable, that they're actionable. And that's what I'm going to teach you with a method that's called the SMART method. It's actually one of the simplest forms to putting your goals down, figuring out what they're going to be, making sure you put

Starting point is 00:01:32 a deadline on it, and actually making sure that you achieve it. And when you use this method correctly, it can really transform vague ambitions and things that are like, hey, it'd be nice to lose 10 pounds, or it'd be nice to make $100,000 this year. It takes them from being vague ambitions into really clear plans of action. So let's dive in. The acronym that we're going to be working off of is SMART, S-M-A-R-T. So when you're sitting down and you're going, okay, I want to plan my goals for the next six months. I want to plan my goals for the month, for the week, for the year, whatever it is. The first part is the S, which is to make sure that they are specific. And a specific goal addresses the what, like what is your goal going

Starting point is 00:02:12 to be? Why is it your goal? How are you going to hit your goal? It isn't enough just to say, I want to be fit. Instead, you want to be really precise. And if you've listened to me talk about goals before in previous podcast episodes, I always talk about get clear on your goals and then get more clear on your goals and then get more clear on your goals. The clearer that you can be, the better. It's like if you're going to try to shoot at something that's 100 yards away, you could try to shoot at it with a gun and just shoot. Or if you have a sniper rifle and you actually have a scope that you're looking through, it makes it a lot easier to hit that goal because you have a really clear target of exactly what it is that you're trying to hit. And, you know, one of my, one of my first mentors

Starting point is 00:02:53 used to always say this when I was younger, he used to always talk about when you're setting goals and why the reason why you want to get clear is the example of if there, if you went to go shoot a bow and arrow, right? And there's you and you're competing against the number one archer in the world. They're going to beat you every single time. But if you blindfold that archer and then spin them around, you have a better chance of hitting the target for only one reason, simply because you can see the target and the archer cannot. And so when you're thinking about your goals, think like, how clear can I get on my goals? And so really what you want to do is you want to start to ask yourself detailed questions when you're starting to write out your goals. And so like, what is my goal? Who is involved in my

Starting point is 00:03:36 goal? What is it specifically that I want to achieve? Why do I want to achieve that thing? How can I make it easier on myself? How can I remove roadblocks? How can I remove distractions? What do I need to stop doing in order to achieve this goal? What do I need to start doing in order to achieve this goal? Where will this goal happen? Where will I make sure that I achieve it? Why do I want to achieve it? How will I achieve it? Who can help me accomplish this goal? And you sit down, you actually ask yourself questions around the goal. So you write down what the goal is. So if it's like, I want to lose 10 pounds. Okay, cool. You've got it. But now you've got to start to get a lot more clear by sitting down and asking yourself those types of questions. You can ask yourself

Starting point is 00:04:16 the questions that I just asked, or you can come up with your own set of questions to help you get more clear. Another thing that helps you get really clear and specific on it is to visualize the outcome. Imagine it in as many details as possible. And I did a podcast episode a couple episodes ago where I talk about the visualization process and why it's so important and how there's been study after study after study that show when humans sit down and actually try to visualize their goals, they are more likely to hit their goals and they're more likely to get there quicker than someone who does not. You know, if it's a, if it's a fitness goal, if you want to lose 10 pounds, visualize yourself in the beach and looking amazing in this bikini because you've never really thought that you were confident

Starting point is 00:04:59 in a bikini before. How do you see yourself? Could you imagine that body and what you would feel like when you look at yourself in the mirror and know that you put in the hard work and you accomplish it? You know, if you're running a marathon, can you imagine yourself waking up and running every single day? And what do it look like to cross that finish line? One of the things that I said in the podcast a couple episodes ago was that people who actually visualize working out in the actual muscle, like if you're doing a bicep curl, if you visualize a bicep curl and you visualize the tensing of the

Starting point is 00:05:30 bicep and the releasing of it, that actually just the visualization of sitting down and visualizing you working out on that bicep makes you stronger. Now, it's obviously not going to make you huge, and it's not going to be something that you could just use as a substitute for working out, but it's just like adding gas to the fire. Another thing to help you get more clear, which obviously I've said, is to write down your goals. Like, write down all of your goals. Take them out of your head and put them on paper.

Starting point is 00:05:57 One of the reasons why we're not really clear on our goals is because they're not on paper, and when they're on paper, they can be planned. There's been multiple studies around why writing your goals down is actually going to help you hit your goals. Dr. Gail Matthews, who's a psychology professor at the Dominican University in California, in 2007, she conducted a study with 267 participants, and the participants were divided into groups. And they found out that those who wrote down their goals and shared their weekly updates with their group and their friends were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing what their goals were over the people who just decided to create goals and do nothing with them. And so they didn't write them down. So the ones,

Starting point is 00:06:42 if you just look at that, you're 33% more likely to be successful in your goals if you just write them down. There's also another really famous study that many people have heard about before. And Mark McCormick writes about it in his book, what they don't teach you in Harvard Business School. And the famous study is this. In 1979, Harvard, of their graduating class

Starting point is 00:07:03 of people who were in their MBA program, they went around and they asked all of them about their goals. And when they went through and they surveyed all of their graduates and the people who were graduating, in 1979, they found out that 13% had goals, but only 3% actually wrote down their goals. 10 years later, in 1989, they followed up with all of those people, and the 3% who had written down their goals were earning on average in money in their bank account 10 times more than the other 97% combined. So those 3%, that tiny little bit of people were averaging 10 times more in income than

Starting point is 00:07:40 the other 97% combined who did not write down their goals. So when you write down your goals, it forces you to get more clear on exactly what it is that you want. So if you want to get better at playing guitar, right, and you want to learn some songs and you've got something coming up that you want to get better at, instead of saying, I want to get better at playing the guitar, you could have a really specific goal, like I want to learn three new songs that I can play within the next two months so that I can play them at my next show. I want to learn, if you want to get even more clear, I want to learn Time by Pink Floyd. I want to learn Dazed and Confused by Led Zeppelin. I want to learn Hotel California by the

Starting point is 00:08:15 Eagles to perform on my show at September 24th. And then you get really clear versus, like, you see the difference? I want to get better at guitar versus I want to learn time, Dazed and Confused, Hotel California by September 24th in my next show. You're like, oh, okay. It makes it really easy to go, well, now I've got to start working on learning how to play time. And you start figuring out how to do that. So that's the first part is be specific.

Starting point is 00:08:39 Next part, which is the M, is to make sure they're measurable. A measurable is something that is quantifiable because numbers don't lie. The characteristic enables you to, this characteristic really enables you to kind of track your progress and know when your goals are achieved and how you're measuring up according to those goals. So what you want to do is you want to break down your goals. If it's a big goal, split it into smaller milestones so you can track your progress. So if you say, I want to lose 30 pounds by the end of the year, and there's exactly six months left, okay, 30 divided by six, that's five, five pounds per month,

Starting point is 00:09:14 which means I need to average about 1.25 pounds loss per week. And then what you do is once you break it down and you have those numbers, you can start to track your progress and review it. And you can sit down every single week and say, well, how am I tracking to try to get those 30 pounds lost by the next six months? And what it does, it keeps you accountable and really allows you to adjust something if you need to. So let's say that last week you didn't lose your 1.25 pounds. What adjustments do you need to make to make sure this next week that you not only get the 1.25 pounds, but you also account and make up for the pounds that you didn't lose last week? So you start to think about it. What adjustments? How can I change it? Or let's say you're ahead of track. Maybe you lost three pounds last week. Well, then you're like, damn, I lost three pounds.

Starting point is 00:10:02 What did I do well? So I can make sure I do that again this next week because I'm ahead of pace. And you start to actually figure it out so you can measure all of your goals. So that's number two, which is M, measurable. Three is A, which is achievable. So you want to make sure that obviously I want you to set big goals and I want you to think big and I want you to shoot for the moon. Cause even if you don't land on the moon, you'll end up on the stars, whatever the hell people say. Right? So is your goal actually realistic? Is it achievable? I want you to think back. I don't want you to think big, but I also want to make sure it's achievable. Right? So if you want to, let's say you want to launch a brand new business today, then you say, well, I want to make a million dollars in the next three months. Sure, maybe, but that's probably like 99.99% of the time not achievable. And if you

Starting point is 00:10:53 set this goal and you don't achieve it, that could actually be demotivating for you. And in the long run can actually hurt you more than it will actually help you. And so really, can you figure out a way to make sure that you go, well, is this something I could definitely do? Like, is this possible? This is possible. Is it probable? Okay, it is probable. Okay, perfect. And then what happens is you adjust as you need to. Sometimes, you know, you have a lot of life constraints and you might have children, you might have a job and you might have things that you have to do and extracurricular activities. And so you might have to change your life around a little bit to make sure. Like you might say, okay, well, it might not necessarily, according to where my life is right now, it might not be realistic to do X, Y, Z.

Starting point is 00:11:38 But if I make adjustments and maybe I have my husband take the kids to soccer practice and I make sure that I outsource this thing and I don't have to do this thing. And now I decide that, you know what, I'm not going to go to hang out with my friends on Friday because I'm going to work on myself. Whatever it might be, you can start to shift your life around because in order for your life to be different, you must be different. And when you're saying yes to something like achieving a goal, you are going to have to say no to some things. If we go back to the example of losing 30 pounds, you must adjust your lifestyle. You're going to have to free up some time to be able to work out and to be able to go for runs.

Starting point is 00:12:18 You might have to go to bed early. You might have to wake up earlier. And you adjust your current life so that you can hit that goal. So it might not be realistic now, but can it become realistic if you make some shifts? And you might need to adjust what you're eating in order to lose weight. You might need to eat more in order to lose weight. Sometimes it's not about eating less. Sometimes it's just about eating right. I know people who, the way the metabolism works, they actually have to eat more in order to lose weight, but they're eating the right thing and they lose weight by doing that. So that is the

Starting point is 00:12:50 third one, which is the A. And I'm sorry, which is, yeah, which is the A. And then we go into the R, which is relevant. What relevant means is, does this goal actually achieve with your larger life objectives? Does this, does it align with, if you achieve it, does it align with everything that you want in your life, with your objectives, with your values, with your ambitions? And this was really where it's important to ask yourself the question, which I talked about in the first one, which is why? Why is this goal significant to you? My very first coach I had when I was 19 years old, he used to always say this, and I've said it over and over again on this podcast, but when your why is strong enough, like why you want to achieve that goal, your how will reveal itself. And so

Starting point is 00:13:37 if your why is strong enough, you'll figure out a way to get it done. If you can't find a really compelling reason, it might not be the right goal for you. And so just make sure that it aligns with the life that you want. If you say, hey, listen, I want to make $500,000 this year. Cool. That's great. And there's adjustments that you could make and you could do it. And it might align with your life because you could say, okay, listen, if I make this $500,000, I could put X amount of dollars into investments, X amount of dollars into savings. We could pay off our house. We could put money into the children's college fund. That might align with you. Or you might look at it and say, $500,000, you know what? It might take some time away for my children. And they're really young and I just don't want to take time away from my children right now. So

Starting point is 00:14:18 maybe I'd like to spend more time. So would you be okay making 200 grand this year, 250 grand this year? And you really start to decide, does this align with my long-term goals and my plans of what's going on and what I want my life to be? And so really, is it relevant or is it just something that's like, yeah, I want to make money to make money? Whatever it is, see if it actually aligns with the life that you're trying to create. And then what happens is when you're looking at this, you can start to prioritize these goals. Usually when you sit down and write down goals, you're probably going to write down multiple goals, right? If you have multiple goals, can you prioritize them and ask yourself, okay, based off of what's going on in my life and where

Starting point is 00:14:58 I want to be in the next six months, what is the most important goal for me right now? If I were to put all of my, instead of putting, you know, 33% of my focus into this goal and 33% of my focus in this goal and 33% of my focus in this goal, is there one goal that I could put a hundred percent of my energy and effort towards? So therefore you don't divert your focus to different goals, but you can actually just focus on just one goal and one goal only. And so is it relevant with your life? And then the last one, the T, which is really important, is time bound. That means every goal should have a deadline. And the reason why is because if it has a deadline, it creates a sense of urgency.

Starting point is 00:15:35 And that allows for better planning when you have a deadline as well. And then once again, you can start tracking, you start writing them down, all of that. And it's like that phrase, a goal without a deadline is just simply a dream and so can you actually sit down and decide how you're going to plan out your goals what it's going to look like when you plan out these goals and can you then go I'm gonna get it achieved by this date same way that I said I'm gonna learn three songs by September 24th you've got to give yourself a deadline because you guys know right before you go on vacation the day before you go on guys know right before you go on vacation, the day before you go on vacation, the week before you go on vacation, it's the most productive

Starting point is 00:16:08 week that you have. Why? Because there's time constraints. If you have an exam tomorrow and you're not fully studied up for it, you'll throw everything else to the wayside and then you'll just go directly into studying for that thing. And so what you want to do is simply put little tiny constraints on yourself to make sure that you're going after your goals. And you set really clear deadlines, whether it's a day, a month from now, or a year from now, you want to be really, really clear on when you're going

Starting point is 00:16:34 to achieve this goal. And the reason why is because this really helps you review and adjust your goals. The same way that I said, if I'm going to lose, you know, 60 pounds and I'm going to lose 30 pounds in the next six months, well, then at the halfway point, I can sit down and say, okay, that's been three months now. I've got three months left. How am I tracking? Am I ahead of pace? Am I behind pace?

Starting point is 00:16:55 And what do I need to adjust and change in my life to make sure that I achieve those? Because if you find yourself ahead of schedule, you can make sure that you do what you need to do. If you find yourself behind schedule, you can reevaluate your goals. You can reevaluate your timeline, or you can say, listen, I got to put my pedal, I got to put the pedal to the metal, I got to put my foot down on this thing. I got to make sure I put every ounce of energy I can into this. And so an example would be, instead of saying like, I want to lose weight, we can go back to, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 10 weeks. Okay, awesome. And so what you're really trying to do with this is you're

Starting point is 00:17:29 really trying to have an actual strategy. This is one of the best strategies. It's very simple. It's very smart. And it's very smart way of sitting down and planning out your goals. Because all too often we come up to our New Year's resolutions and it's January 1st and we say, this year I want to make $100,000. And then you just say it out loud or you say it in your own head and you say, that's my goal for the year. But you don't actually sit down and make it a smart goal. You don't actually sit down and say, you know what? Okay, what am I going to do with this? I want to make sure I'm very specific on what this goal is. I want to figure out a way that I can make sure that this goal is very measurable. I want to make sure that this goal is achievable for me. I want to make sure this goal is relevant to my life. And I want to make sure I have a time constraint so that I can

Starting point is 00:18:12 make sure that I'm hitting this goal by this date. Ultimately, if you do this, it will make you much more likely to achieve your goals. The one thing I really want you to really understand from this is whether you use this strategy or another strategy, I just want you to have a strategy to hitting your goals. Because ultimately, if you just let another year go past and you go, oh man, it's New Year's again. What was my New Year's resolution last year? I think I wanted to make like $100,000 this year. But how'd that go?

Starting point is 00:18:42 Well, I only made $40,000 this year. Well, okay, I'll try again next year. No, it's how can we actually take our goals and try to make a plan with it. If you are working for a company, and that company was saying, hey, we want to do X amount of dollars in revenue, you're on the sales team, you're going to figure out a way to hit your goals and to train and to actually train yourself to be better. But track your goals, plan your goals, put everything together to make sure that you're doing it right. And that's really what it comes down to is can you do the exact same thing in your life? As if your boss said, okay, you want to lose

Starting point is 00:19:14 30 pounds? Okay, you're wanting to lose 30 pounds in six months? Okay, you have to get it done. If your boss said that, you're probably much more motivated to get it done because someone else is putting pressure on you. And so can you make your goals smart? Have some sort of strategy. This strategy or another one, make sure you get it done. So that's all I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor.

Starting point is 00:19:39 Share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you love this podcast, you're absolutely 100% going to love my book, which is called Level Up, How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life. Currently, as of today, it is number one in psychology for new releases on Amazon. It is also number one in business, and it is also number one in self-development. So I promise you, you'll love it. Go to robdial.com slash book and get it. Once again, robdial.com slash book. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make

Starting point is 00:20:15 someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - How To Set SMART Goals: A Guide To Simple Goal Setting

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