The Secret To Succeeding With Your Goals

Why do some people keep going with their goals while others give up? Jim briefly covers setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely, then focuses on what he finds is often overlooked: how we treat ourselves when we have a setback. He explains why self-compassion, accountability and starting with small, reasonable steps matter, and shares a simple exercise of imagining how you would respond to a loved one who made the same mistake. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

I have one particular. Specific thing to talk about to do with goals that I think is often overlooked. I think it's a really key ingredient in whether people succeed or not. And I just think it's often overlooked. So I want to start by just giving kind of an overview of how you set good goals. This is something that some people may be familiar with. It's commonly sort of talked about. And so that would be the SMART anacronym that we use for goals. Goals that are specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, And timely. And so we need to be specific about what we're trying to achieve. It needs to be measurable. How would we know when we get there? It needs to be achievable. Obviously. Realistic and then timely. So timely being a sense of How are we looking at it? Is it a weekly goal, Monthly goal, Yearly goal? Typically, When people start the new year, They might have more short-term goals. I think it's good to have short, Medium, And long-term goals. So another thing that's very helpful with goals and actually a necessity really with goals is accountability. You know, Have someone in your life that you share what your goal is. Have somebody that ideally can encourage you when you get discouraged or when you feel that you're perhaps, You know, You're having some setbacks or feeling a bit discouraged. One of the challenges with, One of the main challenges with goals is if, Of course, If we, I'll just use for example, The idea of working out maybe five days a week as a goal, And somebody would maybe have a couple of weeks where they'd work out five days a week, Then next week they might, You know, Only work out three times or twice the week after, And then they would start to have doubts, Start to be perhaps critical of themselves. Start to feel perhaps shame, Some shame around like I'm just not able to do it. And so there's a lot that can happen. But that is the area that I want to focus on, Is that the attitude by which we approach ourselves when that's starting to happen is really key. Because if we start to believe that we can't succeed, That we're not going to make it, Then it's almost guaranteed we won't. It's at that time you have to be compassionate with yourself, You have to be understanding, You have to. . . Remind yourself that change is hard. I don't know anyone that's made significant changes in their life that hasn't had a rough day, A rough week, Hasn't had some setbacks. But do you give up? Do you abandon your goal? I think that has a lot to do with that attitude by which you approach yourselves. So we need to try to be more compassionate with yourself. We need to try to not let that inner critic jump all over us and be judgmental with us when we have a rough week. And that will have a lot to do with whether you'll continue to move forward or whether you'll abandon your goal. So that for me is what's really important. I think overall, It's one of the focuses in my practice of people to be more compassionate with themselves, Kinder with themselves. In fact, There's a little exercise that we do that I think is quite helpful. It's very simple, Which is basically think of a loved one or someone that's close to you. Think about a mistake think about how you would view them if they made the same mistake that you had made. And I think typically what you'll find is you would be very compassionate with them, You would be understanding with them, You'd be encouraging with them. And yet somehow, Because of the way the brain operates, We aren't that way with ourself. But we can get there. We can learn those skills to be kinder, More understanding, And compassionate with ourselves. And that will make a huge difference in terms of whether we succeed. And in general, It'll make a big difference in terms of how we are in our life. Are we more compassionate with ourself? Understanding with ourself? Obviously that's a more desirable state than walking around being angry at yourself and being critical of yourself. So that's what I want people to focus on. Understand that change is hard. Change takes time. And it doesn't matter, In my view, It shouldn't matter whether you take a month to get there, Six months to get there. If you're constantly moving forward, And as we would often say, Progress not perfection. Are we continuing to move even small increments towards that goal? That's the point, Not whether we've sort of done it perfectly. So I do think there needs to be some awareness of this to be succeeding at goals. I do think there's a lot of people out there that have even given up making goals for themselves because they're just so tired of failing and who wants to fail and who wants to feel the feelings associated, The guilt, The shame associated with failure, Not to mention the starting to feel that, You know, You're not the person that has what you need to achieve these goals. Which I don't think is true, But in those moments you can actually believe that. And you've got people around you that may be succeeding at their goals and you're not succeeding at yours, Which is going to make you feel even worse about yourself. So being self-compassionate, Being kind, Being understanding. Having a focus on just continuing to move forward. The other thing that's helpful that we sometimes refer to is the growth mindset. What are you learning as you're going? Is there a setback here? Is there something that's taking place? Did we learn from it? Are we continuing to move forward? If that's the case, Then even a setback has value because we're learning. Believe that anything we're doing is an opportunity to learn and if we can view it that way, We can view it in a positive way. So continuing to move towards your goals, Having some accountability, Having some kindness, Compassion for yourself. And even when you're setting your goals, Set them up in such a way that they're realistic. I prefer, Quite honestly, With my clients, They start off with very obtainable goals that are very reasonable, So we are almost guaranteed of succeeding. And then as they move forward, We would start off, For example, Using the working out a week failure. And as a therapist working with clients, Of course, I don't want to set them up to fail. We want to set them up for success. But the only challenge, Though, That I sometimes run into, And I totally get, Is that some people would feel that if these goals are not big enough, Then they don't have enough meaning for them. So if I'm going to start working out two days a week, I can't get excited about that goal. So I want to make it five days a week so I can get excited about it. Individual, It's their life. But if the ultimate goal is to get there, Then I think moving towards that goal in a more methodical way makes more sense.