In order to achieve your SMART goals, the first step is to visualize the goals.  Let’s take a look at two different goals to make it easy to visualize the point.


1.     I want to exercise 5 hours per day at the gym, work 9 am to 5 pm each day and still spend time with my husband and children at home each day and get to bed by 11 pm each night.


2.     I want to exercise for one hour each morning at home before going to work from 9 am to 5 pm so that I can spend time with my husband and children in the evenings and get to bed by 11 pm each night.


Goal number one is just crazy. It is not realistic that a person can meet that schedule for a sustained period. There are just not enough hours in the day to make this possible. Goal number two is realistic. In order to get in that one hour of working out each morning, the person just needs to get up a little earlier. With a little work, this can be done.

When making goals, you must look at what can actually be done. At the beginning, think about how you are going to get from dreaming about your goals to making the goal a reality. Think about how each step will be accomplished. Think about the work, time, money, and other resources needed to make things a reality. It is not realistic to make a goal requiring you to spend $500 per week if you only earn $600 per week because you still need money to live. When we dream, we can dream of impossible or hard to do things. When we are setting goals, we need to be realistic. When setting goals, we need to plan step by step, piece by piece the steps necessary to achieve the impossible. Air flight was once impossible, but step by step, piece by piece, plan by plan, the Wright Brothers made it happen.

In fiction, we can dream and use hope alone make things real. Like in the story, the “The Velveteen Rabbit.” The rabbit in the story thought he could become real if he was loved enough. He thought that hope and love would be enough to make his dream come true. While that worked in the book, it is important to realize the book is a work of fiction. In the real world, we have to do work to make things happen. We have to go out on a limb, to put the work in, to plan realistically.