The GoalTribe Blog

Better! Faster! Smarter! That’s how you want to set goals, right? Oh – and you want it to be easy too. There’s one popular strategy for setting goals that captures all the main keys to goal setting in one easy-to-remember mnemonic: S.M.A.R.T. Much of the advice here is from “Goal Setting Theory” which is recognized by psychologist as one of the most well-proven motivational theories. Here are the 5 parts of setting S.M.A.R.T. goals:

1. Specific: Make sure your goal statement defines a clear, unambiguous result. For example: “Run 3 times a week for a year”, not “Start running”.
2. Measurable: Have a clear way to tell when the goal has been accomplished. For example: “Lose 5 pounds”, not “Lose weight”.
3. Attainable: You have to believe you can achieve the goal. You can both adjust the goal to your self-image, and adjust your self-image to realize your incredible potential.
4. Rewarding: You have to be excited about achieving the goal. There has to be some reason, some emotion, to drive you through the work to succeed. Why do you want to achieve this?
5. Timebound: It doesn’t really become a goal until you set a target date to achieve it. That’s when you ignite the rocket and begin taking action every day to succeed.

There are several variations on what the S.M.A.R.T. mnemonic stands for. These are the ones I find most effective from my experience. You can learn about all of them from the S.M.A.R.T. Goals Wikipedia article.

Reference: Locke, Edwin A. (2001) Motivation by Goal Setting, Handbook of Organization Behavior, 2:43-54

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From our experience with the thousands of goals on GoalTribe.com, and goals in general, we find that there are some categories of goals that are always popular. Here is our take on what the top 10 goals of all time are:

The Top 10 Goals

1. Lose weight
2. Begin a regular exercise habit
3. Eat Healthier
4. Find a job (or a better job)
5. Get out of debt
6. Become financially independent
7. Learning a new skill
8. Learn a new language
9. Go Traveling
10. Quit Smoking

Steps for Achieving Top 10 Goals

1. Write down the goal you want to achieve, be specific.
2. Now write a plan for how to achieve that goal. (Refer to Learn How to Do Absolutely Anything.)
3. Now set a date that you want to achieve that goal by.
4. Now schedule when you will do each of the steps on your plan.
5. Get one or more people to be your ‘support group’ or ‘accountability buddies’. These people can hold you accountable to take action,
6. help you come up with ideas, and celebrate your successes.
7. Take action right away!

To make it extremely easy to achieve your goals, we created GoalTribe.com the most advanced goal achievement social network on the web. GoalTribe takes you step-by-step through planning a goal, building motivation, getting a support group, getting reminder emails, and overcoming obstacles until you succeed.

Get started changing your life now!

The passing of Michael Jackson is truly the end of the era. I still remember seeing him dance for the first time and being just astounded that a human could physically move like that. He’ll forever be my King of Pop. Like all great

The 5 Most Important Things I Learned From Michael Jackson

1. A single person can still move a planet of 6 billion people to tears of joy, heart-pounding excitement, and gasps of sheer wonder.
2. With dedication and commitment, you can do things nobody has ever done before – ever – in the history of the planet. (What could you do?)
3. The media loves to create super stars – and it loves to tear them down. (What would it take for our press to be a more purely positive force in our world?)
4. Fame and fortune do not = happiness. (Only changing your habitual ways of thinking can make you happy.)
5. Plastic surgery still has a long way to go…
6. Bonus Lesson: The concept of a flawless “hero” is a myth. Nobody has ever lived their life perfectly.

Thanks for all the great times, Michael. May you rest in peace. Your pain is over…

What did you learn from Michael’s life and death? What are your favorite Michael Jackson memories? Please share in the comments.

Tim Brownson makes an interesting point about the reaction to Michael Jackson’s death that I recommend reading.

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You have tremendous capabilities, even if you don’t know it yet. But the capabilities you have as an individual are trivial compared to the extraordinary power you can unleash when you collaborate with allies. When people work together to help each other achieve their goals, they become 10 times more powerful than the sum of their parts. There is SO much that you can share that is incredibly valuable to the recipient, but costs almost nothing for you to give. Here is a partial list of benefits you can get from allies:

1. Accountability
2. Creative problem solving
3. Introductions to contacts
4. Knowledge
5. Skills
6. Shared resources
7. Encouragement
8. Enthusiasm
9. Shared Vision
10. Camaraderie

Every time you share those things you’re putting value out into the world that inspires others to support you in return. When you ask someone to support you, be your ally, be “on your support team”, or join your “Mastermind Group”, you committing to share those things with each other and keep pushing each other to succeed. This is an extremely powerful technique that many successful people use.

Recruiting Allies

You can ask friends or family members who may share your goals or ambitions, or you can find people with similar interests or goals online (we made GoalTribe.com for that purpose). Tell them of your goals and explain you’re looking for an accountability partner. And simply ask them if they’re interested. Keep asking until you get a few people that will be there for you when you need them. Then make a plan for how you will share goals, and hold each other accountable. GoalTribe provides features to do this for you automatically.

There is a dangerous myth that pervades our culture that leads a large number of people into misery. It’s probably even causing you stress right now. It’s one that I’ve only recently found my way out of. This fallacy is so basic to our way of thinking that we often don’t even question it, although I’ve traveled through many countries where people widely believe the exact opposite (and are much happier as a result).

The myth:

You can take complete control of your life,
all you have to do is set goals and take massive action until you achieve them.

The truth:

You can achieve incredible things in your life,
And you can be profoundly joyful,
But there will always be more things out of your control than in your control
- and that’s just perfect!

Each thing you try to control, each thing that you prefer to be one way or the other, each ‘rule’ you have for how life should be, consumes a little more of your power, attention and happiness. Every time you get upset that someone breaks one of your rules of behavior, or every time you’re annoyed that a picture is hanging a little crooked, it takes some of the personal attention you could be putting toward gaining financial independence, building a great relationship with your kids, or making a big difference in your community.

In any given situation, the person who is most flexible (has the fewest rules and attachments to what should happen) is the most powerful. Many self improvement programs begin by encouraging you to write an exhaustive list of all the things you want in all areas of your life, and to be very particular about the outcome you want - “what make, model and color of car?” It’s OK to know the ideal outcome, but if that’s the only outcome that will make you happy, you could achieve amazing things in your life and still feel like a failure. Your definition of success is so specific that you’ve made it much harder than necessary to achieve. After many years of being frustrated trying to control all aspects of my life, I finally realized that by thinking that way, you really miss how magnificent most of life already is. You miss out on a lot of gratitude, which is a big key to happiness.

It’s actually possible to be profoundly content with the world just as it is, while still passionately, vigerously pursuing those goals which are important to you (even becoming rich or changing the world). The principal can be tough to wrap your brain around. It’s really the crux of the difference between Eastern and Western philosophy. I came to understand it over time through a variety of sources including the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, and Eckhart Tolle. But I finally really got it through Wayne Dyers incredible book: Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao.

Bottom Line: Goals are an important part of a fulfilled life, but so are flexibility, peace, and contentment.

Pursue your wildest dreams! But begin from a place of deep joy and happiness with the world around you.

8 Keys to Loving Your Life Right Now

1. You can have anything that you want, but you can’t have everything that you want. Concentrate your power on changing those things that matter most to you. Relax about everything else. Appreciate them as they are.

2. On any given day trillions of things go right, and only a small fraction go ‘wrong’. Trillions of sun beams fall upon the earth where billions of plants happily turn them into energy to prepare oxygen, tens of thousands of  people around the world do their jobs to take the plants and other materials to prepare food, clothes and other things for you. They test, write directions, package and ship goods thousands of miles, put them on shelves and follow the rules of commerce and money exchange to let you buy them. As you travel to the store, most of the people you pass follow the rules to give you a safe journey. And when you sit down to enjoy a meal, trillions of cells in your body work together to allow you to move the food to your mouth, chew, enjoy the taste, smell the aromas, and process the food into all the new cells your body needs. You can go on for hours listing all the intricate details which worked well. So why get obsessed about the few things that didn’t go exactly like you wanted them to today!?

3. Practice Non-Attachment. This basic principal of Buddhism used to seem like giving up on life to me. Then I finally came to understand it in a much more practical sense. You can have high intention for a goal, but be non-attached to the outcome. In other words, you’re emotions aren’t tied to what happens. You won’t be devastated if you don’t get the exact outcome you were after.

4. Don’t Judge. Basically, this means stop bothering yourself with how other people are behaving. The fact is there are almost no agreed upon, universal rules about how people should act these days. So you can’t constantly be outraged that people aren’t following your specific set of rules! Especially if you’ve never communicated those rules to that person. It’s just wasted energy. Let people follow their own path in life. Instead be curious about how they view the world, be entertained by the color they add to your experience, be thankful you’ve got something different and interesting to observe. Give up controlling others, send love instead, and find your life becoming  more peaceful.

5. Surrender to what is. The worst suffering comes when you just refuse to accept the world as it is. It’s amazing how often we do this. Just surrender to the world as it is, then begin to work to make things better.

6. Imperfection is perfect. Image a book that began “And they lived happily ever after.” Imagine a movie where the lead actor has a perfect life and nothing bad ever happens. You’d be bored stiff! All the challenges and ‘imperfections’ in life are actually what make life worth living. If life were ‘perfect’ we’d have to invent problems just to entertain ourselves. Enjoy and celebrate the challenges, imperfections and annoyances that come up. If you think “we’ll laugh at this some day”, laugh at it now! Look at challenges as entertaining adventures, a heroes’ quest that will teach you something about yourself and life.

7. Don’t sweat the small stuff - It’s all small stuff. The whole mental game here, is expanding what you consider ’small stuff’.

8. In my world, nothing ever goes wrong - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. This is the highest level of understanding that the previous 7 points build up to. It leads to an incredible sense of peace in life, and frees enormous energy to passionately pursue your dreams and goals. Just imagine for a moment what if nothing really ever DOES go wrong. What if all the things that seem to be wrong are just opportunities to pit your creativity and passion against to grow from the challenge? What if it’s supposed to happen like that and it’s perfect that way?

Some of this will make sense to you, and some of it might seem like complete nonsense. Take what you can and let the rest just float over your mind and see if it makes sense some time in the future.

If you have any experiences or thoughts to add, please comment below!

This post was inspired by the post: How to Let Go of Control on zenhabits.com

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Every goal system, including GoalTribe, tells you to sit down and plan out the steps, the actions, to achieving your goal. That’s usually when the goal-planner (that’s you) starts sweating. You start thinking, “I have no idea how to achieve this goal or else I would have done it already!” And yo know what? You’re right! You DON’T know how to achieve the goal. Nobody can predict the future. You don’t know what obstacles you’re going to run into, what resources you’re going to need, how much effort it’s going to take, how much money you’ll need. Any good goal process begins with good quality time writing down a goal plan that totally sucks.

STAY CALM!  That’s exactly how things are supposed to be. Your plan will wrong. It will need revision. You might have to throw it out completely and start again. It might just say “Step one: Go find someone who can help me with step 1.” That’s ok!

What’s important is that you take some time to take your best guesstimation of what you steps you have to take to succeed. It’s important to take some time to think. Don’t get hung up on all the things that you don’t know or could go wrong. Sometimes you don’t even need to plan more than your first few steps. Spend the appropriate amount of time planning, then GET INTO ACTION.

Once you start taking action, you’ll learn a lot more about what’s involved. And then you can feel free to start adjusting your plan based on what you’re learning. And you don’t have to feel bad that your goal plan sucked. It’s serving it’s purpose in all it’s wretched imperfection. It’s forcing you to think ahead and process what you DO know. And it doesn’t take a perfect plan to do that.

Sucky Goal plan’s RULE!