How many times have you made a fitness New Year’s resolution and never achieved it?
Tried to lose those extra 10-20-30 lbs. or finally see those abs, only to give up.
No matter what your excuse was for stopping, there is a huge possibility that it wasn’t your fault, rather you may have been destined to fail because the New Year’s resolution/fitness goal itself wasn’t a SMART goal.
If you want to achieve your fitness New Year’s resolution once and for all and avoid wasted time and effort, you need to make sure it’s a smart resolution in the first place. If you don’t, it’s highly probably you will end up worse than you started which can result in feelings of stress, anxiety and depression.
Stress less and be happier by making S.M.A.R.T. New Year’s resolutions.
S.M.A.R.T. New Year’s Resolutions
For a resolution(goal) to be a resolution(goal) in the first place and not be dumb, it must be S.M.A.R.T.
S.M.A.R.T. stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely
If the goal isn’t every one of those things, it isn’t a goal at all, it’s merely wishful thinking or a dream. Wishful thinking and dreams aren’t goals and if you treat your New Year’s resolutions as such, it will lead to frustration, wasted time and cause negative emotions.
Let’s explore how to set S.M.A.R.T. goals and the importance of each element.
Specific
The more specific you are, the likelier you are to obtain your new year’s resolution.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I hear someone tell me that their goal is to lose a little weight and gain a little muscle. When a goal is vague like this one, it doesn’t take much to achieve it and provides barely any requirement to get better. All you would need to do than is lose 1 ounce of weight and gain one ounce of muscle and the goal would be realized.
Losing only 1 ounce of weight and gaining 1 ounce of muscle wasn’t the real goal, but the real goal was never specific enough to require more effort.
If no effort is required to achieve the new year’s resolution, what motivation is there to do anything?
God’s Walmart
With my clients I use the analogy of God’s Walmart when it comes to goal setting.
I tell them to imagine that they are in God’s Walmart and anything that they want they can have. I also tell them that they must be specific, because God is going to give you exactly what you want.
Going with the example before, if all you said was you wanted to lose some weight, God could give you a 1-ounce lost product and that will satisfy the requirements of what you wanted.
The more specific and detailed you are about your goal, the easier it will be to achieve the goal, because the specifics of the goal will help shape and discover the proper method for you to achieve the goal.
When forming a specific goal, you can’t stop at the desired result, you MUST include the desired method of attack as well. If you only include the desired result, you will miss the opportunity to do what you want and how you want while still achieving the goal by including such parameters in the goal. I don’t know about you, but my client’s goals don’t include struggle and stress from doing the program.
Two helpful questions to answer when trying to get specific about your New Year’s resolutions are:
- What will the goal accomplish?
- How and why will it be accomplished?
Measurable
What you measure gets better.
It’s a simple concept to grasp when we talk about something like ROI or budget. You must know what is coming in and what is going out. If you don’t track these two aspects, then you will never know your ROI or have a budget in the first place. Sure, there is more to tracking money than that, but when it comes to health and fitness goals, it’s like people forget all about this concept and never measure any indicators of whether you’re on the right track or not.
Smaller, bigger, healthier, feel better are not specific enough goals and are not measurable.
Smaller and bigger are not defined to whether they want to change their height, overall weight, overall dimensions or clothes size, body fat percentage, muscle size, nothing! The vagueness has no indicators of whether your effort is successful or not. Healthier and feel better how? Are there specific aspects of your life you want to be healthier or to feel better?
Some indicators, or data points, I commonly measure with clients are:
- Body composition (i.e. body fat, lean muscle mass, fat mass)
- Running or performance times
- Amount of reps done in the gym
- Flexibility or range of motion
- Abilities and capabilities
- Sleep habits (tracked through a sleep journal)
- Energy throughout the day (tracked through journal)
No matter what your new year’s resolution is, you need to be able to measure your progress in a quantifiable way.
Start by asking the question:
How will you measure whether the New Year’s resolution has been reached or not? List as many indicators as possible.
Attainable/achievable
You hear it from all the self-help gurus and all those around you; “Your goals aren’t big enough” “Shoot for the stars and you’ll end up somewhere in between.” These statements sound fine and dandy, but if you don’t believe you can achieve them, how motivated will you be to start the process or continue the process when something goes wrong?
A New Year’s resolution you don’t believe is attainable is simply a dream. Having dreams is good and they can be realized, but in order to keep motivated along the way, you need to have small realistic goals that, when achieved in progression, can lead to the lofty goals/dreams.
A goal should be big enough to challenge you, but not defeat you or else you may experience negative feelings, which often results in sabotage. Having small goals and celebrating every small step forward will help you realize bigger and loftier goals and dreams.
To accurately know what you can achieve, you must be real with yourself of where you are and where you have been in relation to achieving the goal. If you don’t know this information, how can you even accurately judge what you are able to achieve?
When forming a New Year’s resolution, weigh the effort, time and other costs your goal will take against other obligations and priorities in your life.
Some questions you can ask yourself are:
- Is it possible?
- Have others done it successfully?
- Are you able to do what is required of you?
- Do you have the necessary knowledge, skills, abilities, and resources to accomplish the goal?
- Is the goal really acceptable to you?
Relevant/results focused
Why do you want to reach this New Year’s resolution?
Such a simple question, yet so many people struggle to answer it with any depth or detail.
Typical answers include: For myself, to be happier, to be the best me, to be healthy and a bunch of other hog wash.
All these answers lack depth. To me, this means “I’m not telling”, or “I have no clue why”. To be happy is a choice not a destination. To be the best me has no defined measurable basis and to be healthy lacks any reason why.
The reason why you do anything is what gives it importance and meaning. It would be hard to sustain anything without importance or meaning, especially if it was anything but fun and easy. Without a big enough reason why, you will never achieve your goal.
Your goal needs to be a goal that directly achieves results not only for physical outcomes, but for the psychological reasons and outcomes you desire as well.
Obtaining a goal that isn’t relevant to you desired outcome can be very defeating and cause major damage psychologically.
When finding how relevant your New Year’s resolution is, start by asking yourself:
What is the reason, purpose, or benefit of accomplishing this New Year’s resolution/goal?
What is the objective behind the goal, and will this goal really achieve that?
Ask Why at least three times to undercover more powerful reagent reasons to reach your goal.
Timely/time bound
Your New Year’s resolution needs to have a time measurement in it to hold you accountable. If you don’t put a concrete time to achieve your goal, excuses will always pop up
If there is no time limit, the New Year’s resolution yet again becomes a mere dream or aspiration; a hopeful ending in your quest. With no time limit, most people will keep pushing off the goal or justify straying from the goal or never achieve it because since there is no time limit, there is no urgency.
If there is a big enough reason why you want to achieve the goal, achieving it should be an urgent matter. If so, wouldn’t it make since to make the goal timely to achieve it in the most efficient and effective way possible?
When you get to this point of forming your New Year’s resolution ask yourself:
What is the established completion date and does that completion date create a practical sense of urgency?
Please be SMART with you New Year’s resolutions.
Don’t you want to achieve the New Year’s resolution as fast as possible? Isn’t that always the goal? If that is true, the New Year’s resolution must be a SMART goal in the first place, or else the cards are going to be stacked against you to achieve it.
And even if you do achieve your New Year’s resolution, can you guarantee that you will be fulfilled by achieving it?
I believe the worst failure in life isn’t failing to achieve something, NO!
The greatest failure in life is to achieve what you thought you wanted and not to be fulfilled by it.
That is the greatest tragedy that I want all to avoid, because there are many wondrous joys of life that are missed when you waste time and effort by chasing what doesn’t matter.
So please make sure your fitness goals and New Year’s resolutions are S.M.A.R.T. to give yourself the best chance to achieve your fitness goal and to be happy and fulfilled by it.
-AO
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