Creating a Well-Formed Outcome: “How to Make Smart Goals even Smarter”

Posted On January 2, 2024 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

There’s an art to setting goals that will make them much more achievable, called “SMART goals”. SMART is an acronym for making goals more Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed. Goals that are developed mentally as a sensory experience of the outcome you want to accomplish, are far more successful and take less time to accomplish. Some say a goal isn’t really a goal until it’s written down and set in stone, so to speak, but if we take this idea a step further by forming goals into sensory rich experiences that elicit positive emotions, we can achieve them with far less effort and in a shorter amount of time. We can develop goals into well-defined outcomes by answering a series of questions designed to help you become more specific about the reasons you have for setting your goal, what needs and desires it will serve to fulfill, how to know when you’ve actually achieved your goal as an outcome, and that will lead you through the process necessary for imagining it as being already accomplished. You want to create the goal as if you’re in the midst of actually experiencing it.

This process will help you understand your true motives for what you want and what you need in order to achieve them, while also helping you to identify potential problems the outcome may produce in other areas of your life. We often set goals in one area of our life that will present a new series of problems in another area, without realizing it or being able to anticipate it. When one accomplishment causes problems in other areas of our life that’s equally or more important to us, we can develop a tendency to sabotage ourselves through the inner conflict and constant debate it causes. In order to eliminate unconscious resistance or the tendency to sabotage ourselves in accomplishing our intended outcome, needs to be ecological in nature and produce desired results in all areas of your life in a harmonious and balanced way. This process will help you to identify potential problems and adjust your desired outcome to be more beneficial and harmonious within all areas of your life.

Your outcome should meet the following criteria:

• Is the goal stated in positive terms?
• Is it self-initiated, maintained, and within my control?
• Does it describe the evidence procedure?
• Is the context clearly defined?
• Does it identify the needed resources?
• Have I evaluated whether it is ecological?
• Does it identify the first step I need to take?
• What time-frame am I working with?

Now lets review the criteria in a step-by-step manner:

1 – State your outcome in positive terms: What ‘do’ you want? . . . or what would you rather have instead?

• Only include what you want and leave out what you don’t want.

2- Is it self-initiated, maintained and within your control?

• Am I doing this for myself or someone else?
• Does the outcome rely solely on me to accomplish?
• Does this require me to depend on someone else for its achievement?

3- Does it describe the evidence procedure? (When will I know I have achieved my goal?)

• How will I know that I am getting or producing the outcome I desire?
• What will I be doing when I get it?
• What will I see, hear, and feel when I have it?

4- Appropriately contextualized? (Clearly defined in specific terms)

• Where, when, how, and with whom do I want it?

5- Does it identify the resources needed? (What will you need to achieve it?)

• What resources will I need to accomplish this?
• What resources do I have now?
• What resources do I need to acquire?
• Do I have evidence of achieving this before?
• Do I know someone else who has achieved this?
• What happens if I act ‘as if’ I have the resources? (helps shift beliefs that may be holding you back)

6- Check the goal to insure it is ecological. (In relationship to other areas of your life)

• What is the real purpose for why I want this?
• What will I lose or gain if I have it?
• What will happen if I get it?
• What will happen if I don’t get it?
• What won’t happen if I don’t get it?
• How will this affect other areas of my life?

7- What is the first step? (Everything begins with the first step)

• Take your action plan and break it into chunks and stages.
• Create defined steps within each chunk.
• Determine which ones require other ones first.
• Create a structured, sequential process as a strategy.

8 – Create realistic time frames for achieving each step or chunk (stage)

• Develop an overall time-frame to accomplish your goal.
• Develop realistic time-frames for each stage or chunk for creating it.
• Then develop a time-frame for each step within the chunk.
• When planning your day, review what part you’re currently working on and build it into your weekly and daily schedule for ‘things to do’.
• Keep this action plan where you can see it and review it daily and stay on task with the time-frames allotted in an organized and systematic manner.
• Hold yourself accountable for each step and time-frame.

9. Create a mental rehearsal as the experience of your outcome:

• Place yourself in a possible situation where you have achieved your outcome and are experiencing it.
• What are you doing?
• What do you see? Describe it in detail.
• What are you hearing?
• What are you touching or feeling?
• What are you smelling or tasting?
• Notice how you’re feeling, what emotions you’re experiencing, and transform any negative feelings (fear, anxiety, guilt, apprehension, etc.) into very positive feelings (confidence, enthusiasm, excitement, joy, contentment, etc.) Practice this until you only associate very positive feelings to the reality of the experience.
• Shape the experience in such a way that you form a kind of love for the idea.
• What are you telling yourself about your experience?
• Play out a scenario in your mind’s eye until you get it just the way you want it. Then repeat it several times, anchoring it, until you can recall it like an actual memory, easily and naturally.
• Associate the experience with the goal itself, so that anytime you think of the goal, you run the experience of it through your mind as a form of daydreaming or remembering.
• Visualize yourself regularly having the experience of your goal as manifest and actual. See yourself living the reality of your goal.

Once you have a believable vision of your desired outcome, commit to taking consistent action to accomplish it. Pick certain points along the way where you momentarily step back and carefully evaluate your progress. As you begin taking action to accomplish your goal, you’ll begin receiving ‘feedback’ as to what it’s causing and setting in motion, evaluate this to see if its causing what you want it too. As you go along make any adjustments or modifications to your process based on the feedback you’re getting as new information or changing circumstances. If the feedback indicates that what you’re doing isn’t producing what you want it to, then change what you’re doing or how you’re doing it until it begins producing the desired results. These results were laid out in the evidence procedure of this process.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Teacher, Mentor, Coach and Consultant for Creative Mind Development