Welcome to 2023 everyone! New year, new opportunities, new me. (Just for the cliché)
Let’s be honest: 2022 had it’s ups and downs. It was really chaotic if you ask me, but I have a very good feeling about 2023. I hope it won’t disappoint any of us.
I don’t know about you, but I’m the type of person who fights for their dreams. I have so many plans and project for 2023. I’m about to start my Social Media Management carrier and one of my books is going to be available in English soon. I’m gonna be honest. I’m freaking about all the things that is going to happen this year. I feel like things are getting out of hands, but to defeat that, I know that I have to stay organized.
So what I will use this year to stay on the top of my game is to define my goals with the help of SMART goals.
What are SMART goals?
SMART is the acronym which can help you define a goal.
It stands for
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Relevant
T – Time-bound
So what each of them means? Let me explain.
1. Specific
People don’t get the power of being specific. They usually just think about some kind of action that they’ll like to do in the future. The thing with these plans is that they rarely actually happen or you might don’t even when you achieved your goal!
Example:
Let’s say your goal is to get fit.
There are several problem with this statement. First of all, being “fit” is relevant, right? What you consider fit might differentiate from someone else’s opinion. Also we always feel like there is place for improvement and we tend to forget that we just achieved the dream our past self made up.
Let’s rewrite this goal: I want to lose 10 kilograms.
Now you’ve not only specified your goal but you made it…
2.Measurable
When you have a goal in mind there is a big chance that it’s going to take time for you to achieve that goal. Keeping up with things can be difficult especially because you might not see the impact of your actions right away, only later in the future weeks, months or even years from now.
Measuring will help you in a couple of ways:
- It will help you track your progress which can be motivating
- It will help you decided whether you are on the right track towards your goals
- You will know when you’ve achieved your SMART goals
That’s why the example from the last paragraph is perfect for here too.
Tracking your weight loss journey is a totally measurable task to do, so I recommend you start it NOW and stop reading this post! (No I’m just kidding, please don’t leave me!)
Every now and then you might bump into a goal that is hard to track, like your mental well-being or some habits you want to get better at. This is when I recommend people Bullet Journaling. To maximize your efforts on achieving your goals, you might need a Bullet Journal, I’m not gonna lie.
Good for you that I already made a blog post about my 2023 BuJo and how you can do your own! Check it out by clicking here if you’ve been enjoying this so far. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed in that post neither.
3.Achievable
I make this mistake too, I’m not gonna lie, but sometimes, you just have to come back down to the ground, and rethink what you are actually capable of. Because I promise that it feels worse not to achieve a goal than having to come up with something more realistic. (Or I’m just too ambitious and ideological)
“But, Carmen! How should I know whether my goals are achievable? Or when should I know if I’m aiming too low?” You may ask. The answer is simple.
Ask someone. If you feel like you can’t see yourself and your qualities clearyly enough to determine wheteher a goal is right for you or not, ask someone who knows you well. Ask them if they think you could do better or worse. When they say “meh, that’s about right” that’s the reaction you want to get. The little “meh” at the beginning of the sentence indicates that they thought about the answer, cause it feels difficult to them, but they believe you have what it takes.
It’s really hard to tell about our example (about weight loss) whether it’s achievable, we would have to know more about the person to answer that question.
So let’s say the person who’s goal is to lose 10 kgs, is someone who has been living an active life in the past, but didn’t have the time besides work to really pay attention to training and food. For them this might be an achievable goal. It really depends on the person and their traits.
4.Relevant
I didn’t go to university, because I had an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. But most of my friends did, and talking to them about their studies made me realize some things.
1, Some people have no idea of what they want to do with their life and they don’t really want to find a purpose neither. 2, They do things that are “written by the book”, meaning that they follow the crowd.
Tell me how often can we see cases where someone has followed the socially accepted path which is, go to school, get a degree, work in a 9-5 job, get married, have kids, retire, only to realize that this is not at all what they wanted to do with their life.
It is quite hard to find you purpose in life. You might have to wait decades for it to happen, but it’s unlikely to find it if you are not searching for it.
And that’s why relevant goal setting is important. Something I would regret is to spend time with a project or a goal I never truly cared about.
I wrote a blog post about how to start searching for goals and how to set them right. If you feel like you need some type of guidance or thoughts to get you started on your journey, click here and read the post.
5.Time-bound
A lot of us fall into the trap of “I’m gonna do it later” and never get it done. Take a moment and think about something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but still haven’t. I know you might think that you have time to do it and that’s okay, but remember, tomorrow is almost here and what will you do when it’s too late?
Also time-bound goals can be long-term too. If you want to travel the world or buy your dream car, or something that requires more work and planning set a SMART goal where you promise yourself that you would fulfill the goal in 5, 10 or 15 years.
Putting a deadline will increase your likelihood of actually achieving something. Our actions are often triggered by a deadline, especially if you are anything like me.
In school I always left all of my essays and class projects for the last minute. Once I had to write a whole interview with my grandmother for a class project and we had a Skype conversation at 8 pm which lasted for 2 hours and after that, I sat down and wrote the whole interview in a different form. I was about 10 years old at the time.
You see deadlines bring a sense of urgency. It reminds us that time never stops and you should act sooner rather than later.
My smart goals for 2023
In order for you to see some examples I’m gonna share some of my SMART goals for 2023.
– Get 3000 followers on my Instagram account by the end of the year (If you enjoyed this blog post it would be very much appreciated if you could help me with this one. @carmenwrites_)
– Finish my current writing project by the end of the year.
– Get my drivers license until May.
I hope this blog post helped you and motivated you on how to start your 2023 the right way. I’m wishing you all the best for the new year and if you enjoyed this blog post I would appreciate it if you could look around on my blog a bit more. I like to share all kinds of content, and you will probably find some other useful tips and tricks on how to achieve your real life paradise. Thank you for reading!
