Now, what’s your SMART goal of the day?
In “11 months”, I wrote:
Peace is possible. It comes in the form of abandonment of fear and faith in living deliberately.
I realized such a teaser was cruel unless I offered up some practical advice on how to ‘live deliberately,’ and if nothing else, my study of Buddhism, psychology, NLP, Tony Robbins and other motivational authors has given me some insight on how to do just that. (However, knowing how to live deliberately is much easier than consistently applying that knowledge!)
To live deliberately, you must unchain yourself from the cycle of living in response to external events. We all live this way to some degree, and I’m not sure it’s even possible to live without responding to what’s around us. If, however, we introduce even a small part of our lives that we choose freely, rather than allow the entirety of our existence to be dictated by circumstance, something amazing happens. Fear loses its power. We begin to take the form of our dreams.
Here on Maui, they call it manifestation, and attribute some amazing successes to it. Legend of a ‘Yale study of goal-setting’ has floated around personal motivation circles for years, citing that the 3% of Yale graduates in the class of 1953 who wrote down their personal goals now make more than the other 97% combined. In Buddhism, the practice is a form of mindfulness.
I believe two things comprise living deliberately: the first, choosing what is truly important to you, and the second, acting in a habitual way to support what is important to you.
The first, deciding what’s important, takes more soul-searching, because what you want to focus on are things that you’re willing to support – day in and day out – for as long as they remain important to you. I feel, as a Buddhist, my daily practice is important to me, so that’ll be one of my areas of focus.
Anthony Robbins talks frequently about setting SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Realistic, and Trackable.
Specific means that the goal isn’t overarching – a goal like ‘Study Buddhism’ isn’t specific, given that there are three major styles of Buddhism to begin with (Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana), more than a dozen major schools, and countless regional variations. On the other hand, something like ‘Read 1 Book about Buddhism per week for a year’ is specific and suggests concrete action toward achievement.
This goal is also Measurable; if I’m halfway through a book about Buddhism, I’m fifty percent complete with my goal, and I know that I have the rest of the week to finish it. I can actually plan how to achieve the desired result.
Unlike ‘Study Buddhism,’ this is an Achievable goal, because I can mark it complete when I’ve read one book. Studying Buddhism is, at best, a lifetime practice; at worst, a practice that covers an infinite span of lifetimes. How would I know when I’ve achieved my goal?
(Ok, you’ve got me there… when I’m enlightened, I know, right? — of course, at that point my goal should’ve been ‘Become Enlightened’ — and I’ve still got no way of knowing ahead of time how to track my progress…)
It’s a Realistic goal, because I only need to read one book in a week, and knowing how fast I read along with how much free time I have, I know that it isn’t impossible to get where I want to be. Saying ‘Read 5 Books on Buddhism this week’ might be a challenge’; and I know that ‘Read 20 Books on Buddhism this week’ is impossible.
Finally, the goal should be Trackable – over time I can track and chart my progress toward the goal, my consistency in attaining it. This comes out of being measurable, but tends to apply on a grander scale.
Now, what’s your SMART goal of the day?