Simple Guidance For Setting A Specific Goal

The goal-setting process should provide you with intrinsic encouragement, motivation and direction. You want to make sure the goals are attainable and specific. Here is how!

Setting a goal gives you something to strive towards. Goal setting helps to motivate you by having something to strive towards. It gives you direction and also provides intrinsic encouragement when you reach that goal. But you want to make sure you are setting goals that are attainable and specific.

Man in a tie and suspenders in an office. The text says Yeah, if you could go ahead and stop vaguebooking, that would be great.-

You can vaguebook, but you have to be specific in your goals

It’s very important to be specific when you are setting your goals. It’s almost impossible to achieve a goal when you aren’t really sure what it is you are going towards.

If your goal is to lose weight, then your goal should be something along the lines of, “I will lose 40 pounds.” Or, “I will fit into the jeans in my closet.” These are specific goals with measurable outcomes. “I will be thinner,” or “I will lose weight,” are not measurable. “Thinner” means different things to different people.

You can have short-term goals, long-term goals, or both in a specific goal you are setting. Let’s take the weight loss goal. Some people are motivated by the big success, so they are going to just go for the gusto and make a goal of, “I will lose 100 pounds.” Personally, that long-term goal would be fine for me, but I would have to set short-term goals of, “I will lose 10 pounds,” to go along with it.

When you hit a goal, you get a feeling of success. It can raise your endorphins and give you a sense of pride. Some people can get that while working towards a long-term goal. However, some of us need smaller victories along the way. Wherever works for you is fine.

A yellow measuring tape, curled up a bit. Specific goals

Measure your goals, not your worth

Goals should have a measurable outcome. This will come naturally if they are specific. Na matter your goal, you should be able to see an outcome.

For instance, if your goal is to get rid of the clutter in your house, your goal could be, “I will give 4 bags for donation to charity.” The outcome could also be non-tangible. “I will clean for 15 minutes a day until the room is organized.” You will know when the room is done and working for a specified time frame is measurable.

Reach for the stars, but keep your feet on the ground

Whatever goals you are setting, they need to be attainable. If you have a goal of saving $20,000 for a down payment on a house, that’s an attainable goal, but the timing is going to be different for everyone. If your budget allows for you to save $100 a week, a goal of $20,000 in a year is not attainable. So your short-term goal would be $100 a week and the long-term goal would be $20,000 without a timeframe attached.

This is where dividing the goals into long-term and short-term can come in handy. If you have a big goal, like saving $20,000, that long-term goal will likely come in steps and could have some setbacks attached to it. Concentrating on the short-term goal of $100 a week will likely keep you motivated and moving towards that long-term goal.

Sometimes time and the size of the task will lead you towards short-term goals to achieve a long-term goal. If you have a garage that’s full, top to bottom, of years worth of treasures you have collected, that’s not a task that will be completed in a day. So your long-term goal would be, “I will park the car in the garage,” and a series of short-term goals to make that happen, such as, “I will clean out three boxes a week.”

A man sits at a table. His hands are on the table, palms down, and in between them is a clock set to 8:00. Specific goals

How timetables help with goal-setting

Whether your goal is short-term or long-term, it should have a timetable attached to it. That doesn’t mean you can’t adjust this time, but you should have one as a starting point.

If your goal is to lose 100 pounds, it’s reasonable to lose a pound a week. So a goal of losing 100 pounds in 2 years is reasonable. You might reach that goal faster, which is totally fine, but making a goal to lose 100 pounds in a year if you traditionally lose weight slowly, can be setting yourself up for failure.

If you have a short-term goal of saving $100 a week, that has a timeframe attached to it already. But if you have a long-term goal of saving $5,000 in a year, but you end up needing work done on your car and have to use some of that savings, you can adjust your long-term goal to reflect that change.

The point of setting these goals is for you to succeed. They might not always be comfortable, but if they become unmanageable, changing the time frame to fit what you can realistically accomplish is fine.

A chalkboard with I can and I will on it. Specific goals

Phrasing matters when setting a specific goal

You will notice in all the goal examples I stated the goals as, “I will…..”. Setting your goals by saying what you will do will set you up for success. Saying, “I am working towards,” “I am trying to…”, “I want to…” are all too passive and allow you to not accomplish your goals. Stating definitively what you WILL do is a way to set yourself up for success.

This is also telling your brain what it will do. Always say what you want to do. For instance, if a football coach wants the player to hold onto the ball, the command is, “Hold onto the ball,” NOT “Don’t fumble the ball.” You want the brain to hear that it should hold onto the ball. You don’t want that fumbling anywhere in there.

Your goal setting is similar. The goal isn’t, “I won’t eat chocolate today,” but, “I will eat healthy and make good choices.”

And if you have kids, you will want to use this phrasing with them too. Instead of, “Don’t forget your lunch,” it’s “Make sure you take your lunch.”

Four puzzle pieces that go together but aren't put together yet, held by four different people. Specific goals

Let’s work together

Your goals should work together. If you have a goal of lifting weights 4 times a week and a goal of losing 3 pounds a week, those goals might not work together. While lifting weight can certainly help you lose weight, you also gain muscle. So your overall weight might not change much, but you are losing fat and gaining muscle mass. A better goal combination would be to lift weights 4 times a week and to lose 4 inches overall in a month.

If you are making a goal to go to the gym 5 days a week and a goal to clean and organize your house for an hour a day, you will likely not achieve both those goals. Adjusting the goals to I will go to the gym 3 days a week and I will clean and organize the house for an hour 3 days a week are goals that are more realistic and more compatible.

A man in a white shirt is at a laptop with his hands covering his face. On the laptop is the word failed in red. Specific goals

I failed, now what?

I failed, now what

Not all goals are going to be achieved. Know what? That’s A-OK. Acknowledge that you didn’t meet your goal, look at what you could have done differently and move on. Many times, we learn more in our failures than in our successes.

What often happens though is we fail, we beat ourselves up for being a failure, and then we wallow in that. I can almost guarantee that anyone reading this has gotten caught up in that cycle.

If you fail, give yourself the day and start over the next day. If your goal is to make healthy food choices and you end up having a chocolate smorgasbord for dinner, that doesn’t mean you should just give up and eat that way for the rest of the week. That’s a trap we often get caught up in, especially around food. Weigh-in is Thursday, Saturday we eat everything and anything not tied down. Then we figure we have blown it for the week, so might as well eat allllll the cookies. Instead, if you have a bad day, start over the next day.

If you are continually not able to meet a goal, reevaluate the goal. Maybe your body can’t handle working out at the gym every day. Change your goal to, “I will move for 30 minutes every day.” That could be a walk, a trip to the gym, yoga, etc.

Always keep in mind that these goals are here to help and to motivate you. If the goals aren’t working or unattainable, change them to fit what will make you successful.

If you need some extra motivation in reaching your goals, check out our Facebook group! We set an accountability goal and check in daily. If you want more information on how to set your goals, check out this post.