What's in a Goal?

Today in my GMG post, I want to focus on a fundamental question: what's in a goal?

The purpose of this blog is to motivate women the world over to go after their goals and celebrate their successes when they are achieved.  But we all have different goals we wish to accomplish in our short lifetimes.  One woman may want to cook more healthy meals at home.  Another woman may wish to lose 50 pounds this year.  And yet someone else may want to quit smoking once and for all.

So what exactly is the criteria that defines a true goal?  And not just a wish or a dream?

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey, the financial guru.  He has helped me not only understand my personal finances better, but has also taught me a lot about the difference between goals and dreams.  Dave differentiates dreams and goals in this way: a dream is a vague wish, something to be accomplished "someday".  Whereas, a goal is a specific plan that has a time limit to be achieved.  Notice, dreams and goals can be either big or small.  The difference is that dreams are hazy and goals have "feet" on them, so to speak.

No doubt, you've heard of setting SMART goals.  This acronym can help you turn a vague dream into a goal by applying the words contained in a SMART goal.

S-pecific
M-easurable
A-ttainable
R-ealistic
T-imely

Instead of going into depth about each word, let's just take a dream and turn it into a goal using these words.

Dream: I want to cook more.

Why is this a dream?  For one, it's really vague.  It's wonderful to want to cook more, but that just sounds like wishful thinking.  Maybe you've had too much McDonald's this week and would like to savor a dish from your own kitchen.

Here's how we turn it into a goal:

"I want to cook more" defined by SMART goals:

Specifically, I want to cook three dinners per week and eat leftovers on other weeknights.
I will know I've achieved this goal when I have purchased the ingredients for three different meals at the grocery store each week and have cooked the meals I've planned in advance. (Measurable)
I know I can achieve this goal with a little pre-planning on Saturdays and making sure I have been to the grocery store for the week by Monday mornings. (Attainable)
I will stick to this goal because I know it will help my food budget by not eating out so much and also help mine and my family's diet because I can control the foods we're eating. (Realistic)
I want to begin implementing this goal starting on Saturday and will examine my progress at the end of this month and evaluate what's working and what's not. (Timely)

We just took a vague wish and put SMART feet on it, effectively turning it into a goal.  It wasn't difficult, it just required a little more definition than, "I want to cook more".  Now we have a very measurable goal that we will know very simply if we've managed to achieve by the end of the month.

I have a challenge for you today: Take one of your dreams and apply the SMART method to it.  Write it out as a dream and then begin to define it into a goal using the same method above.  Once you've done that, read what you've wrote.  I bet you are starting to get excited now because you may be able to actually see this dream coming to pass, now that it's a goal.

In my next blog post, I will share with you my current SMART goal.

Have an awesome Saturday, all you GMG's!