Goal setting is something I’ve always reluctantly done yet secretly hated. Why? Because I do it like I’m ‘supposed to’ while secretly feeling like I know nothing, or at least very little, is ever going to materialise. Every New Year, new quarter, birthday or any other significant time, I seem to get the urge to set some kind of goal. I see a Facebook post or YouTube video about goals and guilt myself into seeing the need to set them. As if this time I’m going to somehow follow through on everything. Whether it be in business, relationships, general life stuff or even in health and fitness (I know, awesome for a former personal trainer, right?), I always seem to get some kind of motivational uplifting wind for a few days or weeks that then comes crashing back down to earth pretty soon. Don’t get me wrong, obviously I have achieved some of the goals I’ve set myself. I’m not a complete spanner. If I hadn’t, then I would never have launched any kind of business, the podcast, the Facebook group or this website. Hell, I would still be crawling around on my hands and knees because I wouldn’t have achieved the goal of learning to walk! It’s just, the usual way of setting goals, with all the boring SMART stuff, it doesn’t really interest or excite me. If it works for you then great! But I’m calling bullshit on the belief that the world will implode if we haven’t set any SMART goals. In fact, I’m going to do more than call bullshit and suggest there is a much better way of attacking this whole goal setting concept. So in this post I just want to go through five things I’ve learned and like to remember when setting goals: #1 There’s a Problem with ‘Realistic’ I suppose the largest issue I have with the whole SMART thing is that fourth letter – realistic. Yes, we’ve all seen the Will Smith video where he talks about the whole ‘realistic’ thing. If not, I’m sure you’ve seen something along similar lines. And I’m not simply going to fill this space with ball-tickling stuff about reaching for the stars. But, rather, to just be aware of what the R in SMART is conditioning us to think like. Just its presence sort of gets us to reconsider what we really want and implies that we need to re-think our initial desires. In short, it suggests that we compromise on our dreams. After all, isn’t the whole point of a goal to stretch ourselves and to take us into experiencing a new way of being? Not to simply stay almost stagnant and bore ourselves to death with what is ‘realistic’. Having the smaller, less exciting goals in place may well still be needed. For example, eating three healthy meals a day and doing this or that for your business. But, at the same time, hold onto the ‘unrealistic’, big, fucking wow goal(s) you have. Don’t hold them back. And declare them confidently without fear of ridicule. Maybe, deep down, you don’t truly believe these big ones are possible yet. But simply removing the idea that they’re impossible is a monumental start. #2 Desire, Don’t Require Something else I’ve noticed from personal experience about our mindset when it comes to goal setting is how we seem to require that they be achieved. By this I mean that we attach our happiness, our self-worth and our entire identity into achieving a certain goal. We feel like we desperately need to achieve that goal or risk being deemed unfit for society and exiled to some far off corner of the world as life as we know it comes crashing down around us. Of course, this isn’t true. And, when we think logically, we know this isn’t true. Desiring that a goal be achieved is one thing. Wanting to grow and achieve and experience new and ‘better’ things in our lives is perfectly healthy and natural. But requiring it? Needing it to happen and attaching all of our happiness on the outcome? I would suggest maybe that’s not the healthiest way of thinking. It takes us away from appreciating what’s in our lives r