Taking Action – Making a Goal a REAL Part of your Life!

Last week I shared the concept of S.M.A.R.T. goals and how you can apply them in your mothering life (or any area of your life).

If you did not have a chance to read the newsletter or you are a new subscriber, you can still read it on the mommy blues blog by clicking here.
This week I want to help you turn your SMART goal into action.
First, let’s do some PREPARATORY work:
We do this because we want this to be different to all the other times you have wanted to do something differently and then been unable to follow through. All the times you may have tried and given up after a while, or found yourself distracted.
Here are some questions that will help you decide if you are ready and serious about making this change. Even something as seemingly small as spending 30 minutes of quality time with your child per day requires preparation. Because the consequences of doing it, or not doing it are equally significant.
Here are your questions:
1. Is your goal in true alignment with your values? Does it support one of your deeply held values? If not, it will be hard for you to keep the momentum going.
2. Are you willing to learn from experts, and do what has been proven to work? I.E finding, accepting, and applying the help and guidance that is available, rather than reinventing the wheel or trying something that has not worked for you before!
3. Are you ready and willing to do whatever it takes, even if those things are outside your comfort zone, to move to where you want to be?
4. Are you willing to accept full responsibility for your actions? This means no blaming your partner, your schedule, your parents or the economy or anything else. Of course, it means taking credit for your success and acknowledging yourself for that!
5. Do you understand that no-one is coming to rescue you, or do it for you? You are the one that has to do the work.
Okay, so NOW that you are ready, let’s take action by making an ACTION PLAN:
An action plan is like a to-do list but it focuses on the achievement of a single goal. You will list all the steps in order, and as such it allows you to track your progress.
An alternative way of devising and action plan is the Backward Planning Process. In this process you write down your ultimate goal and by what date you wish to achieve it.
You then work backwards, asking yourself what milestone you need to Asks accomplish just before that. You continue to work back, in the same way, until you get to the very first step you need to take to get your plan into action. This is where you begin.
Finally, you can think about structures you can put in place that will support your action. In our example from last week, Jennifer wanted to spend 30 minutes per day with her daughter. A structure she might use would be to set a daily reminder or alarm her cell phone alerting her 20 minutes before the time she will spend with her daughter.
Secondly she decided that she will make herself accountable to someone.
Both these structures give Jennifer a good chance at being consistent with her goal and her plan.
Best of luck!Kim
PS. Don’t forget that one of the best ways of making yourself accountable is by hiring a coach.

Turn your vision into SMART GOALS

Last week I posted an exercise called the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow exercise.
I hope you took the time out for yourself to sit down and write about those three areas of your life (relationships, occupation and health).

If not, you can find it here:

Once you have completed this exercise, it’s time to pick one goal and create a workable plan for achieving it. Before getting to the plan, however, let us look at identifying the GOAL itself.

Let’s begin! Look at your answers for TODAY and TOMORROW and choose one thing that will make the biggest difference to your life right now.

For example, if your goal is in the area of relationships – and it is to spend more quality time with your child or children, you will now want to turn that into a S.M.A.R.T. goal. In other words, a goal that you can easily describe and quantify.

So think about your goal and WRITE IT DOWN in the following way:

Make it Specific (describe it clearly), Measurable (write how you will know when it is achieved), Attainable (it must be something that can be achieved), Realistic (it must be possible for YOU to achieve it), and Time-sensitive (write down the date you wish to start it and, if applicable, the date it will be completed. If ongoing, write down the time of day or week it will be done).

Thus, Jennifer’s SMART goal (which came out of her VISION) might be written down as follows:

VISION: To be a great mom to Kerry.

GOAL: To spend more consistent quality time with my daughter, Kerry – age 10.

S.M.A.R.T. GOAL:

Specific: To spend 30 minutes of time each day with Kerry – this means doing what SHE wants to do FOR A FULL 30 MINUTES without distraction from my cell phone, computer, telephone or other family members and without doing household tasks or organizing her things at the same time.

Measurable: I will know when it is done when 30 minutes have passed and I have done the above. It also has to be done every day.

Attainable: yes

Realistic: yes, I have looked at my schedule and her schedule and I can devote 30 minutes of time to her each day

Time-Sensitive: It needs to be done every day without exception. Each Sunday I will put block off the 30 minutes for each day of the coming week in my diary.

Now that you have identified your goal, and described it clearly, we can begin to look at an ACTION PLAN next week.
For some of you, simply describing the goal will be enough to get you going.

Good luck for this week and let me know how it goes by emailing me at: KimARichardson@aol.com