Thinking S.M.A.R.T., timely

Time passes

NOTE: The SMART series of posts is best read from the first post. Start with http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/ and read from there.

Timely

Effective goal setting is conducted and expected to be completed within a specific time frame i.e. “How long will you give yourself to achieve this goal?”

While research has shown that a definable, pre-determined time frame is necessary for effective goal achievement , from an Intrinsic Coaching® perspective there are really two time frames

What is important to you RIGHT NOW (Timeframe #1) 

When will you commit to achieving that goal? (Timeframe #2)

An Intrinsic Coaching® approach to Time takes the goal setting process to a whole new level of  involvement.  Anchoring the goal commitment to a time frame allows the coach to ask something far more meaningful and far reaching than just “How’s it going?” A coaching approach to Time provides a valuable context for learning …

You didn’t make the goal in the time frame? What did you learn? What will you do differently? 

You did make the goal in the time frame? What did you learn? What will you do differently?

Applying a coaching approach to Time frames can also be an important part of Accountability (another ‘A’ that could perhaps have been included in this acronym – SMAART?) . For example by asking “How do you want to be accountable for the actions you have committed to over this period? or “How do you want to keep track of your progress?” In this way the Time aspect enables the goal setter to take ownership of the goal he/she has set. Any number of options could be appropriate for this – email, phone call, etc. Research has shown that when goal setters take ownership of the goals they set, such goals are far more likely to be achieved. The important thing here is that whatever the goal setter commits to will continue to elicit the all important ’i’ response. This circles right back to where we started this whole series.

GET SMART – LOOK YOURSELF IN THE ‘i’

http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/

Thinking S.M.A.R.T., relevantly (Really Importantly)

Relevance?

NOTE: The SMART series of posts is best read from the first post. Start with http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/ and read from there.

Relevantly

Ok you probably noticed I added a couple of words here (with tongue ever so slightly in cheek) ‘Really Important’ – and here’s why. The “R” in this acronym is typically written as “Realistic” but the problem here is that this word is hardly any different from our  previous word “Attainable”. After all if something is “Attainable” it must, by definition, also be “Realistic”. Apart from these overlapping meanings “Realistic” is also, in my opinion, the “shakiest” of the SMART acronym. Here are some goal oriented meanings of “Realistic” I found when I Googled it recently. The goal must be an objective you are “willing and able to work towards” – It must be “sensible” – It must be “wisely planned”. These are all true of course though are so clearly self-evident and generic that it is hard to believe they could be of much help to the person seeking to set the goal

“Relevant” on the other hand has a different context – it has connotations with “important” – which brings us back to one of my earlier SMART posts http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/   

So I’m going to part with tradition here and say that this ‘R’ should represent “Relevant” – something that has meaning for you, is important for you at the time of setting the goal. It has the added advantage of being able to be defined in terms of your current situation which brings us back to the ‘i’ we discussed in the first couple of posts on this topic. http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/.

So as you think about this ask yourself …

What is relevant to me about achieving this goal?  

Once you are able to answer this question honestly, you are well on your way to setting and achieving the goal you set for yourself.

So keep it relevant – and keep it really really important!

Thinking S.M.A.R.T., attainably

 

  NOTE: The SMART series of posts is best read from the first post. Start with http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/ and read from there.

Attainably

This seems like the most obvious of the S.M.A.R.T.s so far – you mean that if I set a goal it has to be one that I can actually do? – DUH!

On second thinking however this is a factor that deserves closer attention since very often, like beauty, attainment is in the eye (and more importantly the “i”, see below) of the beholder – reminding me of what Henry Ford once famously said

“Whether you think you can or you can’t – you’re right”

Research, and (eventually for some people) experience tells us that the ‘best’ kind of goals are those that are “challenging but achievable” – what industry and the corporate world describe as “stretch” goals, and pop psychologists or self help gurus often describe using motivational rhyming phrases

 ”If you can believe it, you can achieve it” … “if you can sustain it, you can attain it” … “if you can see it, you can be it” … “if the glove don’t fit you must acquit” – well ok maybe not the last one – but you get what I mean, right?

These phrases and others like them support the idea of something very simplistic like “you can achieve anything you set your mind to” – another popular declaration much loved by parents and anyone that wants to be President of the United States. When hearing this statement, even the most positive asset-based person (like me!) is likely to reply …. Anything????” You can achieve anything your set your mind to?” That can’t be right surely?

 As I think about Attainment and these kind of phrases, what comes up for me very powerfully is  the importance of the ‘i’ part of SMART – something I wrote about in the very first post of this series. Seeing things in your mind’s “i” brings up 2 essential, but often underestimated ways of thinking about goal setting and goal attainment

 Clarity – What does this goal look like to you?

Importance -  What is important to you about this goal?

 So for example

You want to lose weight? Ok, what does losing weight look like to you? What is important to you about losing weight?

You want to be more active? What does being more active look like to you? What is important to you about being more active?

You want to reduce the stress in your life? What does a stress-free life look like to you? What is important to you about being stress-free?

You want to  …. etc etc

 ”Any goal you set your mind to”, now becomes “any goal you set with these two in mind” (i.e. in your mind’s ‘i’). This “new thinking” brings up a whole new world of attainment possibilities – with an important qualifier – which turns out to be the next acronymic letter!

 So as you think about what you want to attain – what does this goal look like to you? What is important to you about this goal?

Thinking S.M.A.R.T., measurably

 NOTE: The SMART series of posts is best read from the first post. Start with http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/ and read from there.

Measurably

The second acronymic letter after the “i”, research tells us that a “Measurable” goal is a “makeable” goal. I’m paraphrasing here of course because it is highly unlikely that researchers would be this simplistic. In research terms you would be more likely to read that setting measurable goals allows you to “Establish concrete criteria for accurately determining progress toward the attainment of each set goal considered to be appropriate for the individual in question”.

But hopefully “makeable” does it for you

My point here is that if you can measure the goal you can make the goal. Of course “Makeable” is no guarantee you are going to “make it” – just that you are far more likely to do so if you are able to measure what you want to “make”.

Measurement provides meaning to your goal and puts your achievement into perspective (Did I make it or not? – Was I successful or not?). Only by measuring (and being able to measure) will you discover the answers to these indispensable goal-oriented questions. What is your start point? – What is your endpoint? How will you know where you end up if you don’t know where you started?

I made the point in my last post that being Specific in your goal setting was important. Being Measurable is all of a part with this because the more specific your goal is – the easier it is to measure. For example “I’m going to get more active this year” is not specific and not really measurable – how do you know when you have “got” more active? In contrast, “I’m going to walk briskly around the neighborhood for 15 minutes every day” is not only Specific but also Measurable (Did I walk every day around the neighborhood? Answer = Yes/No. Did I walk briskly? Answer = Yes/No)

You see how all these things are coming together?

So ask yourself … What will tell me I have achieved my goal?

Thinking S.M.A.R.T., specifically

 NOTE: The SMART series of posts is best read from the first post. Start with http://telosity.wordpress.com/2008/02/26/get-smart-look-yourself-in-the-i/ and read from there.

Specifically

In my last post I talked about the importance of “i S.M.A.R.T.” goal setting. Once you have clarified your goal in this way (to see the goal in your minds “i”) the SMART process can just click in (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely).

Although there is a wealth of information out there on SMART goals (over 4000 hits on Google), I want to offer a different, new way of thinking about this, one acronymic letter at a time. Let’s start with

SPECIFIC

Research tells us that if you are specific about the goal you set, you have a much better chance of achieving it. For example “I’m going to walk briskly around the neighborhood for 15 minutes every day” is very specific, whereas “I’m getting in gear for the rest of the year” or “I’m losing weight in ‘08″ are very general, ‘fuzzy’ goals (even though the rhyming thing may allow the goal to roll off the tongue a little easier).

So what makes a goal ‘specific?

Well, there are lots of suggestions out there (Google them and see for yourself) for making sure that goals are specific, many of which are based on the famous 5 “W’s”. Who? What? When? Where? Why? This is certainly one way to point you in the direction of specificity

Who:               Who else is involved in it (the goal)??
What:              What do I want to accomplish?
Where:            Where am I going to do it?
When:             When am I going to do it – and for how long?
Why:               Why am I doing it?

My ‘New Thinking’ here – my “aha” moment! – was that If you adopt the “i” approach, these W’s (or any other “W” you may think of) all become incorporated into the two primary, intrinsic “What’s” I wrote about in my last post

What do I want?                                                                                                                                                                     

What is important to me?

 As I thought about this, I also realized that once these two primary “What’s” have been answered the other W’s just fall into place!

When you answer these two “What’s” honestly (i.e. intrinsically) everything gets clarified, and once this happens, you have optimized your potential for achieving your goal.

So … Specifically … what do you want? … what is important to you?

Get S.M.A.R.T.! (Look yourself in the i)

  I don’t know how many of you remember the TV series of the late ’60’s – but this post has nothing at all to do with that show – or the secret agent of the same name (who always seemed to be looking for a secret formula stolen by KAOS). Instead this is about a secret modification to another and similarly named formula for setting goals (Formula S.M.A.R.T.). I am now about to reveal this modification to you  …. stand by while I call in to CONTROL on my shoe phone, untwirl the combination of this safe and de-activate the alarms.

Seriously though …. there really is an acronym S.M.A.R.T. for goal setting and though it is fairly well known in business, academic and scientific fields (Google-ing ‘SMART Goals’ gets you more than 400,000 hits), I have not seen it often used by ‘regular people’  (e.g. for those annually ubiquitous “Resolutions”). 

So what are SMART goals? The whole smart thing came out of an extensive body of research on goal setting which suggested that a goal (any goal) is more likely to be achieved if you think about it and plan for it in a particular and methodical way. The results of this research was boiled down to the finding  that a goal is more likely to be achieved if it is ‘SPECIFIC’, ‘MEASURABLE’, ‘ACHIEVABLE’, ‘REALISTIC’, and ‘TIMELY’. If you take the first letter of each of these words it spells SMART – pretty smart eh? I wonder how long it took them to come up with that?

I have taught and applied this process many times, with some success, during my tenure as a university professor. What I have also discovered and learned as an intrinsic coach is that a small modification to this acronym, when acted upon, can make it far more meaningful to the person doing the goal setting. I call this modification iS.M.A.R.T.

The “i” can stand for intrinsic (my favorite), or important (my favorite) or inside (my favorite), or increasingly (my favorite), or even i‘m (my favorite). The point is that (apart from the fact that I have a lot of favorites), meaningful goal setting comes from that ‘i‘ and is all about what is important to you and only you.

Before you embark on the S.M.A.R.T. process of setting the goal therefore, it will be essential to first clarify what is important to you (and only to you) about that goal. Ask yourself the two ‘Whats’

What is my goal? What is important to me about this goal?

By the way these ‘whats” are asking entirely different questions, though often they will be thought of as asking the same thing. Here’s a common example

What is my goal? Answer: I want to lose weight

What is important to me about this goal? Answer: I want to lose weight

The second of these questions (What is important to me …?) is the defining issue here, and, I believe, is the key to all meaningful goal setting and goal achieving. If you can ask and answer this question honestly, (e.g. “What is important to me about losing weight?”) you sort of allow your basic values, what you really want, to be clarified and come to the surface. When you elicit this kind of clarity you will be surprised at what was there all the time, just waiting to be discovered!

clarity is in the i of the beholder

Whatever comes up for you it will be more meaningful to you (and only you) in your very own, singular, one of a kind, unique life. Thinking SMART is thinking i

So, as you clarify your goal, look yourself in the i – what are you seeing there?

GOOOAAALLL!!!

 Achieving a wellness goal can often be as exciting as scoring a soccer goal – maybe not quite as vocal as that famous Spanish Soccer commentator’s signature screeeeeeeeeeem of joy – but still something that feels pretty good!

And here’s the thing – even if you don’t achieve the goal you have set for yourself (NOOOOOOO!!!!!!) your “failure” can still be viewed as something positive (YEEEEEEESSSSSS!). It all depends on how you choose to think about it. William James, a 19^th Century philosopher who also wrote influential books on the then young science of psychology, wrote

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

This thinking can also apply to the stress we feel when “failing” to make our goal.  What I have learned during my 35 years in the field of wellness, and perhaps more particularly as an Intrinsic Coach® http://www.agewellinitiatives.com/html/intrinsic_coaching.html is that while there is a very effective formula that everyone can use for the process of setting your goal (more later), what is important to you, and unique to you, is how you choose to react to either achieving or not achieving your goal. It is this more than anything that will determine how you continue, or whether you continue to progress toward current and future goals. The “thought choice” here is between “Failure” or “Learning”. Choosing “Learning” (I didn’t make my goal – What did I learn from this?), is likely to be far more productive than choosing “Failure” (I didn’t make my goal – Why the #$%#@ did I screw up?). The really cool thing about this ’new thinking’ is that it is equally powerful whatever happens with your goal.

You did it? What did you learn? What’s next?

You didn’t do it? What did you learn? What’s next?

So as you think about goals you have set – maybe even that ever more distant New Year’s Resolution – what’s coming up for you?

It’s your choice.

Kicking yourself up the assets

Taking an asset-based or positive approach to life is often viewed it seems as a ‘glass half empty, glass half full’ situation. But I think it is much more than that. As I mentioned in my previous post, the growing field of Positive Psychology has demonstrated time and again that viewing things from an asset-based, positive or optimistic manner is far more than just ‘Positive Thinking” which I think for most people has more of the feel of the philosophy espoused by Stuart Smalley, late of Saturday Night Live ”I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”

Educational research out of Stanford in the 1980’s with teachers and teaching performance reported that an approach focusing and building on the teacher’s ‘assets’ (i.e. their strengths, and what they did well) promoted high quality learning, while an approach focusing on the teacher’s ‘deficits’ (i.e. their weakness, and correcting what they were doing ‘wrong’) was far less effective in eliciting quality learning. Yet this ‘deficit-based’ approach is still out there in education and in behavior change.

One of the best known hypotheses in the area of Successful Aging is “The Compression of Morbidity”. This refers to the idea that the period of sickness (morbidity) at the end of life may be reduced (compressed) by adopting healthier lifestyles. This hypothesis has recieved much attention in the field of gerontology and as a professor I have talked about it myself on many occasions. With my ‘new thinking’ hat on however, I see that, although this hypothesis was clearly aimed at doing good, it was actually taking the ’getting less bad’ approach. Not much assett-kicking going on here! Instead there is an obvious dichotomy between “Successful Aging” – a positive, asset-based concept, and “The Compression of Morbidity” a negative, deficit-based concept. So here’s my Teleosity-based, assett-kicking version of this hypothesis. You heard it here first! Instead of “Compression” – why not “Expansion”? Instead of “Morbidity” – why not “Mobility”? And so we have “The Expansion of Mobility”. In other words ‘being better, longer’ instead of ‘being worse, shorter’.  I like it already!

So as you think about situations and goals in your life – what assets are kicking up for you?

Getting less bad

Back in 2000 when I was an assistant professor at Arizona State University, I was invited to be first author on a book chapter in a major publication called The Handbook of Health Psychology. The title of the chapter was “Effects of physical activity on physical and psychological health:  Implications for exercise adherence and psychophysiological mechanisms” (A pretty long and involved title I admit, but then this was a pretty long and involved book – I was actually Chapter 38 out of 51). The reason I bring this up here is that in my research for writing this chapter I was struck by the fact that almost everything on ‘psychological health’ out there in the scientific literature was about ‘getting less bad’.

I still see the same thing out there today, with the rationale for setting wellness goals such as ‘getting active’, ‘getting fit’, or ‘eating healthy’ predominently based either on reducing your actual bad stuff or on reducing your risk of bad stuff. With a moment’s thought you could probably come up with your own list of the usual bad stuff culprits: overweight, obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar,  stress, depression, anxiety, risk of a heart attack, risk of a stroke, risk of dying, etc.

I suspect this is a consequence of living with our ‘Medical Model’ of health which is uniquely designed to kick in and fix the ‘bad stuff’, and has little or no designs at all on the ’good stuff’. The result of this is that we tend to view our wellbeing more in terms of how bad we aren’t rather than how good we are. When we try to set and achieve our wellness objectives we tend to focus more on overcoming obstacles rather than achieving goals, to focus on what we are not ‘getting’ rather on what we are ‘getting’. It reminds me of the lady I described in my last post. Even though she was truly gaining significant and meaningful benefits from her regular walking, her first response was to focus on what she wasn’t getting “It’s not fun”.

What I know as a scientist and Intrinsic Coach® is that focussing on the positive aspects of pursuing an active lifestyle will bring you a host of positive benefits – you’ll look better and feel better about your self and your life, be more alert, have more energy (usually this is substituted with ‘less fatigue’), clearer thinking, better quality of life, better sleep. And there’s more ….

That old cliched differentiation of people who either view ’the glass half empty or the glass half full’ reveals a pathway to some major (and positive!) consequences. Research has shown that people who have a more optimistic (ie positive, glass half full) view of things do better in life: they earn more money, are more successful, have more friends and even live longer. And as this wasn’t positive enough, you can even learn to be optimistic. You think I’m joking? Go check out the research of Dr. Martin Seligman acknowledged as the founder of “Positive Psychology. Read his book “Learned Optimism”. You can also check out an interview on EQ http://www.eqtoday.com/optimism/seligman.html

 So … As you read about these benefits – what positive things are coming up for you?

The F Word

FUN! I was thinking about that word the other day.  I keep reading that when people want to be more active they should ‘make it fun’ or ‘find something that is fun’ or even ‘find something you enjoy’. I saw these same kind of suggestions in some of this year’s recycled ‘ten sure-fire tips’ to stick to your New Year’s exercise program (Déjà vu all over again?). Of course if you can find an exercise that is Fun, then you are well on your way to a long-term love affair with exercise and your active lifestyle is virtually assured. My point here however is that if you look only for Fun or if you think it always has to be Fun, your options are more likely to be limited, and your intentions are more likely to be compromised. What prompted this line of thinking was a conversation I had recently while standing next to a lady doing some walking on a treadmill (She was doing the walking, I was doing the standing). We were chatting about the usual kind of stuff – ‘How do I get rid of my flabby arms?’,  ’What’s the best kind of exercise to do to lose weight’, etc. I was talking about the fact that she was already doing something really positive by walking on a regular basis when she said “But this isn’t fun”. To which my response was ”Who said it had to be fun”.

Of course this got a big laugh from her and her neighbours who automatically thought that the ‘jock’ in me was speaking (See the image above “50 more reps and you WILL be having fun or suffer the consequences!”). However that was not the point I was trying to make. The day before, this lady had seen me in the gym as I was coming to the end of a fairly intense session on the elliptical trainer. There I was in front of her cranking away, sweat flying, arms pumping. I asked her “When you saw me on the elliptical yesterday, did it look like I was having Fun?”. Again she and her neighbours laughed but (without quoting the resulting conversation word for word), the point I tried to make in the ensuing conversation was that, while I was definitely experiencing a number of positive physical and mental feelings during my workout, ‘Fun’ was not an appropriate descriptor of what these feelings were. Empowerment, self esteem, a sense of achievement, ego, being in control of my body, a sort of sense of completion, of being in tune with the rhythm of my movements – any of those – or more – could describe what I was feeling. But FUN? This didn’t even come close to what I was experiencing.

FUN is defined in the dictionary as “enjoyment or playfulness”, or “something that provides mirth or amusement”. It is certainly a pleasant feeling, and one that almost by definition, is rather trivial and not long lasting. In other words not something in my mind likely to persuade you to adopt any kind of long-term behavior change (like regular exercise).

So I said to this lady “I see you here on a regular basis, so what is important to you about what you do here?”. She thought for a while (actually for about 20 yards at 4 mph), and said. “It’s walking with my friend here (pointing to the lady on the next treadmill). We chat about things and the time just goes by”. I let some time go by without filling in the silence. Then she said “You know what the best thing is? When we walk out of the door at the end of the session, I feel really good about myself because I have achieved something”.

Sounds to me like a lot more than “Fun”!

So as you think about this story – what is important to you about being active?