What is a “SMART” Goal?
A large part of engaging in therapy is often the desire for change. Give yourself the best chance of creating lasting and achievable change by utilizing the “SMART goal” model. “SMART” is an acronym you can use to help with your goal setting. Many people already have a list of goals they would like to achieve during their initial intake or consultation call, but often they’re pretty general or unclear - making it difficult to know if you’ve made progress and when you’ve met your goal. If you don’t have a set goal, it may be advantageous for you to consider what your goals may be since it can help guide your therapeutic journey. Reaching goals and making changes is difficult and doesn’t come naturally to most people. To make sure your goals are clear, achievable, and reasonable you will want them to contain the following five components.
S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R - Relevant
T - Time bound
1. Specific.
Your goal should be clear and not overly general. If your goal encompasses too much, you may not know where to start or you will become intimidated. For example, you would not want your goal to be, “I want to feel better.” What would this statement mean? “Feeling better” can look different to different people. Do you mean mentally or physically?
2. Measurable.
Your goal should have clearly defined objectives that can provide measurements toward the final goal. For example, if your current goal is to “feel less anxious,” how do you intend on knowing when you have successfully reached your goal? Maybe you will feel less anxious when you have 50% less panic attacks or when you can track catastrophic thinking.
3. Achievable.
Your goal should be achievable. It’s ok, in fact it’s encouraged to start small! If you hope to incorporate more physical activity into your life by going to the gym, but you have never been to a gym, it may be a better idea to create a goal of going to the gym once per week, rather than five times. Once you achieve a goal, you can always increase the difficulty level, and doing it this way will increase your confidence in yourself! Another important component of an achievable goal is it needs to be something you have control over. For example, your goal is not achievable if it is, “I want my mother to be nicer to me” or “I want my husband to communicate better with me.” We cannot control other people and our goals need to be within our power to change.
4. Relevant.
Your goal should be helping you achieve the long term result you desire. Your goal should be something you care deeply about changing. Otherwise, how will you be motivated enough to put up with the discomfort of change?! Your goal should not be something just because your best friend thinks you should change it or because your father thinks you should do it. Your goals need to be created from your own intrinsic desire to change.
5. Time Bound.
Your goal should have a start time and an end time. Have you ever wanted to make a change and you kept putting off the start. It’s easy to put off change indefinitely! When you give yourself a concrete start time to make action steps towards your goals, you increase your odds of success! A similar pitfall is when people fail to make an end date they hope to achieve their goal by. It’s best to set a date where you plan to have achieved your goals to motivate you to work on your action steps in a timely manner.
Following these steps will help you and your therapist better realize your purpose for seeking professional assistance, and will improve your therapeutic experience since you can better assess and track progress. A therapist can also help you with creating your SMART goals along with providing encouragement and accountability as you begin making the changes you want to see in yourself.
