Making it at G-MART
Every September we sat down as a class in our home rooms and set goals as individuals. Be better at sports. Get good grades. Get a girlfriend. Pass all of my classes. None of these goals would impress the teachers, time and time again they say “What about X would you do that will make you succeed?”. The paper falls with the hand, and the student slowly turns, thinking to themselves “What about being a better athlete is that hard to understand? I just want to be better!”.
Drop The S
It is clear to see that these goals do indeed need to be SMART, a great jump-off point for the novice goal-setter. Goals should be Specific, Manageable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely…SMART. As a young student, I benefitted from these goals, or my goals would remain be better at…, the SMART guidelines provide value to those whose goals are first written out and really thought about. As an experienced goal setter, die-hard list maker, and task accomplisher I propose that the S be omitted from our lovely acronym, we are now MART goal setters.
To Adapt is to be human
No Specifics? What is a goal if not specific? There are high school goals on one end of the S spectrum and NASA goals on the other, as a general population I think we’ve been looking at goals in the wrong light. What if our goals were more adaptable, more flexible, would allow success in several outcomes and promote value along the entire journey of the goal. Sounds good, eh?
Take one step back in the tier of goal specificity and review your goal. Say I want a specific job, at a certain business that is located in a special town. That is incredibly specific! But what if you don't attain that goal, to no fault of your own, what do you do?
From this new perspective, at one step back, what other avenues do you see? Are there other ways to approach your goal? Perhaps in all of your SMART goal planning there was a minute detail that slipped your attention and prevented you from achieving your goal, it happens. Life happens. There are many times when things out of your control will interfere with the direction you want to go, you end up getting bumped around and your trajectory resembles a cartooned earning graph. Life is not smooth.
That is why I’m arguing that as a human, we should be adaptable and flexible in our successes. It’s in our human nature! There are humans living comfortably on six continents, eating myriad foods, surviving all possible weather in wildly different conditions. As humans, we ARE adaptable and being adaptable is the key to successfully reaching a goal. The goal is not the bullseye, it certainly can be, but hitting the dartboard is a good place to start. Once you are on the board, you can practice and inch your way towards the bullseye, expect failure, and be willing to change your plans on the receiving of news. More important than a goal is a direction, if you are able to progress in a direction then at one point in your life travels you will come across your goal, or perhaps you can reach out a grab it if you aren’t hitting it dead on. There is a reason that there are sayings about failing and trying again, “roll with the punches” being one that I think exemplifies this situation well. If you get punched in the face, would you put yourself back in the same scenario? Or would you try to maneuver around it? Perhaps you get punched in the face again, but now you have another opportunity to work around that scenario. Another quote is by Thomas Edison “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”.
Getting from your current point, A, to your desired point, B, is never as smooth as you would like it to be. There are obstacles in life, seen or unforeseen, that will need to be avoided, outmaneuvered, or conquered in order to reach your goal. Staying on course is what is important, sometimes life is like a board game and you get sent down a snake when what you really wanted is to climb a ladder. It happens.
Make goals destinations, there are several ways to arrive. Some slower, others faster, occasionally cheap, always at a cost. Once you get there, you’ll have a hell of a story and enough experience to navigate similar obstacles successfully in the future.