Emily’s tips on how to stay focused and motivated to reach your goals

It’s coming up to the end of financial year and now can be a great time to reflect on goals and to create some new ones for the remainder of the year. Setting goals are important as they increase motivation, help us to reach our potential and can keep us on track.

However, sometimes goal setting can go astray and we can set unrealistic goals or unachievable goals. Unachievable goals can make us feel unmotivated, deflated and can keep us stuck in bad patterns.

Thus it is important to set goals that are achievable, attainable and motivational. A simple way of making sure that our goals are suitable is utilising the SMART acronym.

SMART stands for:
S - specific
M - measurable
A – achievable
R – relevant
T – time specific

Utilising this acronym allows us to break down our goals into steps. Firstly we want to know clearly what our goal is (thus we need to be specific and detailed in what it is), secondly we want to make sure we can measure the goal to know when we have completed it. Next, the goal needs to be achievable– are we really able to achieve this or have we set the marker to high? Relevant indicates that the goal is something important to us or a direction we want to focus on. Lastly, time specific asks us to consider the time length we want to set to achieve this goal.

Some of you may know that I started running this year with the aim of achieving a half a marathon. I started from 0 and have worked my way up to close to 20kms. SMART goals have really assisted me in working towards this goal. Here is an example of how I utilised SMART goals for running.

S – To run the Melbourne half marathon
M – run 21.5km
A –I have a running schedule I will follow, allowed myself time to slowly improve my performance (more than 7 months) and have a running buddy for motivation.
R – I love improving my fitness and overall health. Thus this goal is important to me and fits within my values.
T-  24th July run 21.5km for Run Melbourne.

Hopefully this examples helps! Good luck with setting our own goals for the remainder of the year!

Best Regards,
Emily Latta

Psychologist at The Mindful Centre