People often have the best of intentions when they set hopeful resolutions for the year ahead, and yet, more often than not, those resolutions don’t make it to February. One reason for this is that people don’t always know how to set goals for themselves in a way that increases their likelihood of achieving success. At Palms Behavioral Health in Harlingen, Texas, we want to give you the tools to set and accomplish resolutions to improve your life.
SMART Goals
How many people do you think have been planning to “lose weight” or “work out more” for years on end, with no clear progress? It’s great to desire improved health, but if your goals are not clearly defined, you are setting yourself up for failure. A better strategy is to ensure your resolution is with SMART goals:
- Specific – Whatever you want to accomplish, define it clearly. Ask yourself questions like who, what, when, where, and why to get a better idea of how to write your goal. Who will be involved? What are you going to do? Where will you do it? When will it happen? Why are you doing this?
- Measurable – How will you know that you are making progress? This is especially important when you are having a day when you aren’t feeling motivated, so that you can push yourself to keep working. If your goal is to exercise, this might mean something like going to the gym 5 days per week or being able to run a certain distance in a specific timeframe.
- Achievable – If your objective isn’t really possible, you’re just going to get frustrated and give up. Ensure that what you’re trying to do is feasible, given the time and energy you have to make it happen. If you’re not going to get up an hour early to run before work, then your goal should take this into consideration and involve an activity you enjoy enough to do at a time when you will realistically follow through.
- Relevant – Why does it matter? What is your motivation? If you don’t have a good reason for doing something, it’s easier to give up, but if you have an important purpose behind your effort, you are more likely to push through.
- Time-bound – What is your deadline for completing not just your big goal but any smaller steps you will achieve along the way? Open-ended goals lack urgency, which can make them easier to set aside for another day.
Putting all of these pieces together, a SMART goal around exercise might look like, “I will go to the gym next to my office after work every weekday and use the treadmill for 30 minutes, adding five minutes per week, gradually building up to an hour. Before I go to bed at night, I will pack a gym bag and set it by the front door. I want to work out more, so I won’t be in pain from walking during our family vacation in July.”
After you set your smart goal, it can be tempting to focus so much on accomplishing it that other responsibilities fall by the wayside. Be sure that you don’t make your goal so big that it will prevent you from maintaining other obligations.
Maintaining Momentum
In addition to setting a goal that is SMART, there are additional steps you can take to optimize your chances of success:
- Commit it to paper – goals become more real when you create a visual representation. This can be anything from a post-it note on the mirror to a vision board or a journal of your progress. If you’re trying to do something daily, you might mark a calendar with a symbol that allows you to see how often you have accomplished the task in question.
- Break the goal into smaller pieces – if a goal is really big, it can become overwhelming, but thinking of it as a series of smaller steps feels more manageable. You aren’t going to run a marathon tomorrow if you haven’t been running at all, but if you run more tomorrow than you did yesterday and gradually add to your distance, completing a marathon could be in your future.
- Tell others what you’re doing – people who support you and encourage you to be your best self are good confidants. They may even want to join you on our journey.
- Evaluate your progress regularly – if you realize you aren’t accomplishing as much as you had hoped, you might need to adjust your plan and make some additional changes. Depending on the goal, a weekly or monthly check-in is advised. Maybe your plan had been to exercise immediately after work, but now that your child has joined a new sport, you have to pick them up from practice as soon as you clock out. You might need to shift your activity to a different time of day or different days of the week.
- Acknowledge your wins – you don’t have to wait until the entire mission is accomplished. Celebrate the little steps along the way. Maybe the big goal is to lose 20 pounds, but that doesn’t mean you can’t pat yourself on the back as you see progress.
At Palms Behavioral Health, we provide inpatient and outpatient treatment for adolescents, adults, and seniors who have been diagnosed with behavioral health disorders. Our programs are trauma-informed, evidence-based, and individualized to meet the needs of each patient we serve.
