Episode 12: SMART Goals

Welcome to the Beauty of Better Podcast, where we help moms thrive in health and fame.

Hey, ladies, welcome to Beauty of Better today.

We're gonna talk about smart goals.

We're gonna define them for you, walk through how you can use them for your home, with workouts, with meal planning, with managing kids and activities, for your own workplace, and just in a lot of areas of life in general, giving you guys some examples.

So smart is actually an acronym, and so S stands for specific, M stands for measurable, A stands for attainable, and R stands for relevant, and T is like timely or time bound.

So we're gonna kind of walk you through why that acronym has those particular pieces, and how to kind of set up and establish some goals that can kind of lead to greater achievement in those things.

I love working with smart goals.

I actually think I have a different R than you.

I think I use them interchangeably.

Sometimes I say realistic, and sometimes I say relevant.

I think they both mean the same thing in this context, but maybe we can like break this down a little bit and just talk about what each of the letters mean a little bit more, and then maybe we could all give examples.

But what I love about smart goals is that this can be used in multiple areas of your life, and it can help you, whether it's professionally with work, I feel like it's so helpful, but then also in exercise goals or nutrition goals or school goals for your kids or just cleaning your house, like you can make a smart goal around that.

So it's just super helpful to help you really visualize what you're working on, and then it has natural timelines to be able to check in to say, is this working, or do I need to adapt?

But I'll just, you guys, okay, if I just go through the letters a little bit deeper, and you can jump in.

Yeah, yeah.

So the S with specific just means, like, you have to be able to define your goal.

So what is it that you are actually working towards?

Because if you don't have something that you're aiming for, you don't know if you hit it or not, right?

So really defining, what is it that I'm working on?

M is measurable.

And that is, there should be some, usually a number, tied to what you're working on.

And we don't have to get complex or into, like, biostats with this.

It could literally be like, I'm going to clean one room of my house, right?

So the one room would be, like, your measurable number.

Did you clean that one room or not?

Or it could be, like, a time for exercise, like, for 30 minutes, or a distance, like, I'm gonna walk a mile today.

Like, that one mile would be your measurement.

So some form of number to just be able to help specify even further what your goal is, and be able to measure whether or not you met it.

A, for attainable, that is really looking at, is it possible?

So is it possible to meet your goal?

And I feel like that one's really important because sometimes there are some of us who are overachievers, or who might want to just have an extreme change, and it might not be attainable.

And an example of this is, maybe you're sedentary, and you really want to start moving more, and you want to start walking more, but if you set a goal to run a marathon in three months, that's probably not attainable, right?

Your body physically probably can't run a marathon in three months, so it wouldn't be an attainable goal, so you wouldn't set that.

But maybe your attainable goal is to be able to walk a mile nonstop, right?

Like, where you're just getting your body moving, and that's more attainable and possible in your life.

The R, so relevant or realistic, is, can you practically carry out your goal?

So that is really looking at, can you fit this in your schedule, right?

Can you remember our rhythms talk?

Does this fit in your family rhythm?

Or is it just, again, impossible to achieve?

So this could be like, again, I'll use the marathon example, because that's easiest to understand, is if you're setting a goal to maybe walk for 30 minutes, six days a week, let's say, but your schedule with your family is crazy, and you don't have six evenings where you can actually go walk, that's not realistic, right?

It doesn't fit, it is attainable, like you could physically do that, but it's not realistic or relevant within your current routine.

And so maybe that needs to come down to four days a week.

Or whatever actually can fit in your schedule.

You don't want to set yourself up for something that you can't realistically achieve.

And then the last one is T, so time-sensitive.

This one's important, and I feel like it can be thrown off the list so easily.

And it's important to have boundaries, time boundaries on your goal, even if it feels like an easy goal.

So even if you just said, I'm going to walk for 30 minutes a day, four days a week, you have to add the little piece at the end that says, for the next month or for the next three weeks or whatever your time frame is, because when you hit that three weeks or that month, that's when you pause and you say, did this work for me?

Did I reach my goal?

Or is it too hard right now and I need to reduce it?

Or maybe it was too easy and I need to make it more challenging.

But when you have that time limit, that is really what opens up the window for adaptability and to really edit your goal.

Because you should be getting stronger, right?

If it's an exercise goal where you can then challenge yourself more, or if it's not working, you make it easier.

But I'm going to let someone else jump in.

I feel like I talked a lot.

I just wondered if that was so helpful though, Danielle, just spelling those out.

But I wonder, as maybe for someone who's never implemented smart goals into their life, how do you know what's a realistic goal and what's attainable?

And is part of that just in a sense, like experimentation, just figuring out, maybe you're a stay-at-home mom and have little toddlers, or maybe you're in the workplace and your kids are older.

Do you ladies maybe have some tips on how do we maybe start with a realistic starting goal?

Because I think, for instance, there's always stuff out there, like I just saw on YouTube something that said, some lady flashed the title, like lost 40 pounds in 10 weeks.

And she had done some kind of program, I don't know.

And I was like, well, people see those kind of highlights, and then they're like, oh, that's attainable because this person did it.

And it's like, okay, for one, that might not be healthy, but we did.

Looking at that, and then just also like your goals for like, maybe it's weight loss, for instance, like finding what is gonna be sustainable, and helpful, and healthy for you.

Do you ladies maybe have any tips on that, and like for people just starting out?

I feel like we both have a lot.

Yeah.

Kristina, you jump in and I'll...

So when we think exercise, I think of like doing fitness assessments, of seeing like kind of where you're at.

So I think the same thing goes with your home, you're cooking, goals for your kids.

It's like, well, where are we currently even at?

So if we're currently, let's just say, able to cook three days a week, but we're really aiming to save some money and we want to have more control over what our kids are consuming and saying, hey, I want to be able to cook five days a week.

So maybe next week we cook four and we slowly work up from there.

But part of it is just like getting the kind of like a pulse check of like that domain necessarily, of like how much time are you currently spending on that?

Like what's the scope of where you're trying to go and where you currently at?

So like kind of taking a hard look at that.

And sometimes it's a little humbling when you're like, okay, this might take me a little bit longer, but with small steps, like I will eventually get there.

But I think it takes an initial assessment of that thing, whether it's house, home, exercise, meals, school, whatever that is.

Yeah.

And I always lean...

Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say, I always lean on making smaller goals.

So kind of, I think we had an episode on sugary drinks, and I explained the client that I had that made really small goals.

And over a year, it was so significant.

And so I think it's starting with even the smallest goal that like maybe thinks, you think it's too easy, because it's way better to have a win over a small goal than to process a failure of a goal that didn't work.

And I think that at Beauty of Better, one thing we're working on developing right now is an assessment tool to incorporate with our health coaching, where we can actually walk moms through this in different areas of life and help them understand that baseline, to say like, this is where you're at, how do we move forward together?

So that is up and coming.

So we are excited to be able to walk through some of our goals together.

So excited about that.

I also just wondered, you know, is it important to like write down the why?

The other day, I read this article about, you know, almost going over about like five times over, like what is your why for starting this SMART goal?

So that when the rubber hits the road and it's like hard to like maybe uphold something that you promised to yourself or a goal that you have, like knowing that why can help keep you on track towards that.

Can you ladies maybe attest to that, like maybe in your own examples of like where your why really helped push something forward?

I think it ties back into the family mission statement and kind of the family goals and rhythms that we've been able to talk about in previous episodes and recognizing that we're kind of in different seasons even within like our core group here at Beauty of Better.

And so I think the why, you know, I can use an example of a smart goal.

One of my daughters have set.

We are involved in a hybrid program, and she's in elementary school, and she's very driven, very performance oriented, but wanted some more tangible feedback that was tied to particular subjects.

So we had her set up smart goals for each subject, and one of her smart goals that we looked at was for writing.

She likes creative writing.

She doesn't like the technical piece of writing.

And so we talked about, okay, so if we were working on the technical piece, and we want to work on that, we talked about the acronym, we walked through everything, and her goal that she developed, which is a little more performance focused, is getting at least 90% on two papers in a row.

And so that would make sure that, like, yeah, like, part of a paper is a creative element, but part of that is that technical piece as well, too.

So that's kind of, you know, maybe, Danielle, you want to expand on answering the question, too, but that's just kind of what popped into my mind.

Yeah, I think intrinsic motivation is key to any lasting change.

Like, there's a lot of external motivation, and you might see, like, you might scroll on social media and be like, oh, I want to look like that, or oh, I want to lose weight, or like what you said, how you saw somebody go through a weight loss program.

And like, that could be like an instant desire to change, but that's not lasting, nor is it usually healthy.

And so it's really that intrinsic motivation that we try to find.

And again, we'll do this in our health coaching.

But for moms who don't participate in that, it's really looking at what is your why for change.

And I think that prayer comes into this, discernment comes into this.

But I think there's practical sites, too, where I've used SMART goals in health coaching a lot.

And I can think of this one client I had, and he was a smoker, and he had smoked for, it was like 40 years.

It was a really long time.

And he tried to quit for 20 years.

He was an older client, and he just couldn't, he failed every time.

And so he came in to meet with me, and was just kind of like, I'm doing this just to do this, but I already know it's gonna fail, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And just like really bad attitude, and just like had failed so many times before, that he just didn't think it was gonna work.

And it was really the intrinsic motivation that nobody had looked at before with him.

And it was, why do you want to change?

And then how do we get there with small steps?

And after getting to know him, and really unpacking that, it was for his grandchildren.

And he realized like, I have grandkids, and that's what I want to live for, and that's who I want to be happy for, and I want to be able to go to the playground with them, and not be out of breath.

And I don't want to worry about secondhand smoke being around them.

And like his list got bigger and bigger, and that was really his core for change.

And so then we walked through the smart goal steps and health behavior theory behind it.

But when the hard days came, we always went back to the grandkids, and that re-centered him and helped him just focus on like, oh yeah, this is why I want to change.

So I feel like that is a big piece.

Wow, how empowering.

And I love that actually, you know, for something even like that, like a big, you know, really hard to overcome smoking, like he had an accountability partner in you.

And that is something that we're hoping, you know, the coaching for moms down the line, like it's so important when we do set these smart goals that we have someone who's keeping us accountable to the promises we make to ourselves, but who can also help draw out, like what is like the root underlying thing there, like our intrinsic motivation.

I think that's just like, that's a role that coaching can have, is that person can help like draw out like, what is your why and why do you want to stick to that?

And I just think that's so powerful.

I'm so excited.

Like, you know, once we get that up and going, like how that's just going to help empower moms in their why, because so many of us like our why is for our kids and you know, and you know, it's for ourselves too, but most of what we do is for our kids.

And so just helping just encourage mamas in that, and in steps forward is just so good.

I do have an example I wanted to share just around like even like household things.

So, you know, I shared in one of our previous episodes about how we've started fostering a little boy.

And, you know, that's just it's been a pretty quick journey from when we found out that we were going to take him into our home, but it was kind of from the beginning of the year, pretty much around the time when we started this podcast that I felt like the Lord speak to me about like getting our house in order.

And so I felt like he just directed me to like, okay, what are spaces in your house that are like causing stress and makes you like not feel calm in your home or maybe stresses the kids out.

And that could be anything from like how the clothes are organized in the closet.

And so I took, like I made like, you know, I wasn't intentionally thinking, oh, this is a smart goal.

But now that I think about it, I'm like, oh, I do this naturally.

But I gave myself like one task in a day, because I have a little toddler boy who's two as well.

And so he was always with me.

So I had to make it manageable with him falling around me, sometimes undoing what I was doing.

So I would give myself like, okay, I'm going to sort out like my older daughter's like closet, and get her clothes organized, get rid of all those old clothes that like, you know, she never wears, and give those new homes.

And so step by step, I made a goal of like simplifying things in our home, knowing that when this little boy comes into our home, it's going to feel a little bit like upside down, like all of our family rhythms are a little different right now.

And just I felt like God helped show me that like I needed to help simplify our space.

And there's so much research out there about the power of decluttering, letting go of things.

I feel lighter, my husband feels lighter when he comes home because it's like, even like simple things like minimizing the amount of clothes your kids have, like less laundry.

And there's just like simple little tools like that, like making smart goals around, how can I simplify life to make it feel less stressful?

And so that's something that really helped us in coming up to welcoming this little boy into our home that has helped create some more peace and calm when we've definitely needed it in our home to feel more like a refuge.

So that's just something that we have implemented, that's helped.

That's so good.

I love that.

And I love that it shows the example of really building small SMART goals.

That's like what we're trying to do, right?

It's not like you said, oh, in one day, I'm going to go through my entire house and clean the whole thing, right?

Like you said, one room at a time, like one room, one day.

And I'm sure you had grace periods in that, too, where it's like, maybe I'll do this five days a week, and two days I'm not.

And that gives you adaptability with that, but that's so good.

And I feel like that's the heart behind SMART goals, too, is to expect change with them.

If you're implementing a goal, you should be seeing positive change, and then you need to adapt your goal to get a little more challenging and a little more challenging.

Similar to the person I was walking through with cutting back soda, where it was like, okay, for a few weeks do this, and then cut back a little more, and cut back a little more.

And so your goals in theory should always be changing.

So I think also expecting that, because our bodies do like routine, right?

And they do like patterns, but with this, we're intentionally getting out of routine and out of patterns and creating new goals, and new goals, and new goals to build.

So I think that's something to keep in mind too.

Yeah, and I like how you mentioned that your two-year-old was along with you, because sometimes I know when we're taking on a task, and we have this vision of how we want to do that, it's kind of like you just want that clear space, like be efficient.

But sometimes the goal is modeling that process, embracing that process, and like, yeah.

And he's seeing you do that, and he gets to take ownership with having maybe a part two, like, oh, mama, I've never seen her wear that.

So I think that's powerful just in that generational set of like, well, why are we doing this, like in bringing up those conversations as well?

Yes, very much.

So, yeah.

So good.

I think I'll give one last, like, simple example, and we can wrap up this episode, make it a little shorter.

But, you know, I just have a goal for myself at home of just exercising four days a week.

I'm trying to not go outside of my realistic relevant goal, and like set more days than that because it's a busy season.

And I just set my cap at 30 minutes, four days a week.

I change up, I have smart goals within my smart goals for what type of exercise I do.

But the time stays, so like 30 minutes, four days a week.

And I'm doing that through the next two months.

I have a two month window.

I try to match it with my semesters, and then I reevaluate because then I know what change is coming.

But so then I know it's exercise, so that's specific.

It's measurable because it's 30 minutes a day, four days a week.

Those are actually two measurement points for it.

It's attainable because I can obviously do that.

And then it's realistic because four days can fit in my schedule, probably six days can't.

And then it's time-sensitive because I have that two-month window where I'm checking in again to see, did this work?

How do I need to adapt to my new routine that's coming?

So that's just a really simple exercise-related one that I do.

So I feel like we've given a home example, we've given a school example, we've given an exercise example, even a smoking example.

But yeah, just a bunch of examples of like all the areas where SMART goals can come into play.

And then again, like, we're really excited to launch health coaching soon and just really be that support in analyzing the baseline and helping you guys just really set attainable goals for yourselves and count those wins and keep adapting so that you can become better every day and better every week with your families.

So, and then one last thing, I just wanted to plug our merch.

We're slowly starting to get that, but I have one of our hoodies on.

I don't know if I can get in.

So cute.

Super cute.

Yeah.

So soft on the inside.

But again, I wear it when I'm working out, cause I'm like, oh, it's that reminder.

Like, I can do this, like Beauty of Better.

I can take one step every day to become a little bit better.

So, mamas, we hope this encouraged you today.

And we might follow up with smart goals, and maybe we'll make a more in-depth one, just going into the different types of goals that you can set.

But we do have health coaching on the horizon, and we are excited to walk with you to become better.

Thanks so much for listening to the Beauty of Better podcast.

If you like today's episode, don't forget to subscribe.

Connect with our community and check out other resources on our website at beautyofbetter.com.

We hope this podcast helped you take the next small step to find the beauty in becoming better.