SMART Goals Are Realistic

When setting your goals for the future, another very important thing to keep in mind is that each goal is realistic. This simply means that the goals have to be possible. They must be based in reality in order to come to fruition. Having said that, we now need to take a much closer look into what reality is.

SMART Goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely

When I sat down to write the post this morning, I had a Deja Vu moment. Didn't I just talk about this yesterday? Well yes, and no. While contemplating this, I thought that maybe the creators of this SMART acronym were simply being slightly redundant in order to make the word SMART. But after a deeper considersation of how I can elaborate on 'Realistic' in a way that I didn't touch on when discussing 'Attainable', I decided to talk more about the reality outside of ourselves. So 'Attainable' was introspective and 'Realistic' becomes extrospection (which I'm not sure is even a word). So without any further ado, let's look a little closer at reality.

I believe that reality is constantly shifting; that there really is no hard, fast, rigid physical reality that exists outside of ourselves. I get this absurd belief from the study of quantum mechanics, but I'm not going to delve into that here. Let's just say for the sake of discussion that reality is somewhat illusional based on the beliefs (or perceptions) of the society as a whole. Your individual beliefs shape your individual reality just as powerfully as the concensus of cummulative beliefs. Therefore, it is actually possible to change our personal reality and the outside world's current reality.

OK, before I lose you all, the reasoning behind the madness of my last statement is this: Once upon a time, the world was flat. It was truly a reality that the world was flat because everyone believed it. Once it was imperically "proven" that the world was indeed a sphere, there was a paradigm shift in reality. Some may argue that this was simply because we didn't know the true reality at the time. But I can turn the nay sayers' argument right back on them and ask the question, then how do we know that what we know is the ultimate 'end-of-the-road' reality on any given subject? Man continues to explore the unknown and is constantly coming up with discoveries that shake the very foundation of our current understanding of things. This says to me that reality is indeed somewhat pliable.

Now does this mean that we can set goals for ourselves like, "I will learn how to fly without the aid of any sort of mechanical or external aerodynamic means". I still advise against it. While it may be realistic on some cosmic level over the next millenium of many men contemplating man's unaided ability to defy gravity. It isn't a goal that we as a society would consider realistic. Try to keep your own personal goals firmly planted in reality.

My final thought on reality would be that while it may not be ultimately as concrete as people think it is. The ability to shift reality requires a massive amount of faith. Perception is reality, or so they say. So in order to make a nebulous thing real, you must be able to "see it" in your minds eye. You have to "believe it" with every ounce of your being and then finally, you may have to convince others that what you believe is in fact true. Keep your goals realistic for you, love and believe in the outcomes and do not give up on them.