I’ve been keeping a secret for ten long years and it’s time I finally come clean. Brace yourself because this is going to be controversial and unpopular…

… I hate the S.M.A.R.T. Goals method. I hate it. 

Unfortunately, it has not only been shoved down my throat since my time in the military, but now that I’m a counselor, I have to teach it to people. I can usually get away with not teaching it but sometimes I have to, and when I do it makes my skin crawl and makes me want to launch myself head first into a wall. 

I hate it. And it’s the cornerstone of almost every self-help blog post, new year’s resolutions posts, literally everything you read about setting goals will lead you to the S.M.A.R.T. goals method. It is like I died and woke up in some kind of goal setting cult that says this is the only method that works to achieve your goals. How did anyone achieve goals before S.M.A.R.T.?!

I am not trying to yuck anyone’s yum, and if the S.M.A.R.T. goals method works for you, rock on, dear reader. I’m sure there is evidence supporting this method as possibly superior to all other goal setting and achieving methods. But I get irrationally irritated when every single resource out there for goal setting is the S.M.A.R.T method. 

Because my brain doesn’t work the S.M.A.R.T. way ( haha ). Mostly because I do suffer from perfectionism and taking things far too literally. This leads to me setting hyper-specific goals, such as I want to do a specific workout five times per week at 5:00am for exactly 45 minutes in order to lose 10 lbs. This might seem like a really great S.M.A.R.T. Goal. It’s specific. It’s measurable in more ways than one (five times per week, 5:00am, 45 minutes, 10lbs). It’s the next three phases where I fail because A.R.T. is not very A.R. for me and the T. gives me anxie-T. 

Is this attainable? Sure, but it is probably not attainable right now in my current state. Not because I am not awake at 5:00am; unfortunately I am for no other reason than I can no longer sleep. However, as someone who suffers from chronic pain among some mental health issues, I do not always have the spoons to actually be moving at 5:00am. And it will only take me a few times of getting bored or anxious halfway through the workout before that 45 minutes becomes 25. 

So then, is this realistic? This is where the perfectionist side of my brain really kicks in, like a cross between a motivational speaker and a drill sergeant. And she’s not very nice to me, to be quite honest. This SHOULD be realistic or this IS realistic because I can do anything if I just set my mind to it, right? Other people are getting up at 5:00am and doing this, or something else I totally can’t do like running around their neighborhood. I’m already awake at 5:00am, I am certain that if I do some certain workout at 5:00am for five days in a row I will eventually lose 10lbs. But what about the part of the workouts I can’t do, due to my physical disabilities? What about when my chronic pain flairs up and I can barely move or walk or breathe? What about when my depression is telling me that bettering myself is pointless? Or when my anxiety tells me that today everyone and their mother will be at the gym wondering why I’m there when I can’t even do half of the workout with perfect form? But then I get all these messages and signals from the outside world, Instagram influencers and self-help bloggers that tell me I can have change my life with just the right morning routine or that I have to be truly hungry all the time in order to achieve these fitness goals.

And then there’s the dreaded T. Time-bound. I am nothing if not a procrastinator. I will also do everything in my power to meet a deadline which means if I have only lost 8lbs (no doubt because I didn’t follow through with the whole 5 days x 45 minutes thing), then I just won’t eat in the days leading up to the deadline. I need to be perfect so if there’s only a couple pounds standing in the way of me being able to say I achieved this goal, I will go to unhealthy lengths as a Hail Mary, and that’s not okay for me to do. 

S.M.A.R.T. goals are too much pressure for the way my brain works. If I were to set goals that were attainable for me, then they wouldn’t be specific or time-bound. And if you’re a S.M.A.R.T. goals zealot, you might be wondering how I get anything accomplished and it’s absolutely a great question. 

I am practicing loving myself and allowing myself to intuitively achieve my goals. Because that seems to work best for me. It leaves perfectionism behind and I am able to shed the constraints of time-bound hell that come with S.M.A.R.T. goals. It assuages the attainable-ness and it’s really the only thing that is realistic for me. What I mean by intuitive is that my ability to work on my goals is based off of how I feel. You’re not always going to be motivated but you need to force yourself to work on your goals  and that’s okay. Because forcing yourself to do something you don’t feel like you’re able to do can lead to some resentments for the work you are putting in. Imagine if you got up in the morning and forced yourself to work out and you have a brain that tells you the entire time that you weren’t ready for this or that you’re not putting in enough effort. I’m all for pushing yourself and giving yourself some motivational pep, but if your brain is going to be mean to you and make you hate yourself and the process of achieving your goal, we’re not doing what I thought we were doing here, right?

My process is this:

1. Figure out what you want to do. I’ll give you an example, I wanted to do yoga. And I bought the yoga pants and the yoga mat and the yoga stuff and everything. And I said to myself “I am going to do yoga everyday”. Spoiler alert, I did not. And this was years ago. So instead of setting this goal the S.M.A.R.T. way, the goal is simply that I want to do yoga. Not that I want to be proficient or maybe master a certain move or put a lot of pressure on myself by saying that I one day want to be an instructor. I just want to do yoga.
2. Figure out why. When I started on that yoga journey, I just wanted yoga to fix my life. I was lost, my life was a mess, my mental health was a mess, and I just wanted something that was going to be THE answer. I have since learned that (allegedly), nothing can just * fix * your life. But yoga can be a good coping skill. When I revisited this goal without guilt or shame for the fact that I hadn’t managed to accomplish this in the last few years of trying and failing, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do yoga simply because it made me feel good. That is a perfectly acceptable and respectable why. A lot of people will tell you that you have to be driven and passionate and specific about your why, but you really don’t. It’s not that serious. You can merely wake up one morning and be like “Wouldn’t it be cool to do yoga?” And that’s that.
3. Do what you can, when you can, how you can. The whole “I have to do this perfect” and “I have to do this everyday” is all-or-nothing thinking and that can lead you to the dreaded dark side of beating yourself up over ‘failures’. I might do something like put my yoga mat on the couch where I normally sit in the morning in order to remind myself to do it. I might even toss some leggings and a sports bra there, too. But if I get up and I don’t have the spoons or the physical ability to do yoga, I can slide those items over and plop myself down without being mean to myself over it. The whole specificity of how many times you’re going to do something and for how long is (in my opinion) setting yourself up for failure IF your mind has a tendency to beat you up for imperfection.
4. Finally, I give myself permission to not be perfect in my endeavors. This is why I don’t make my goals time-bound. For one thing, I will never be truly finished growing and I no longer need to check a box to make myself feel like I accomplished something. I do yoga more than I did last year. That’s it, that was the goal achievement. Everyday that I do yoga I am achieving my goal. Everyday that I don’t do it is not a failure. It is simply holding true to my third step of goal achievement. If I put constraints or conditions on my goals I know I will not achieve them and then I will spiral down into the dungeon of wallowing and self hatred. But if I give myself permission to do what I can, how I can, when I can, and not be perfect, then my goal is already almost achieved. 

Am I now a yoga guru or expert? No. Will I be one day? Maybe, if I decide that’s what I want to do. But I have joy and self-love now, and no amount of achievement will ever be able to replace that. I am not telling you that S.M.A.R.T goal method does not work, and I am not promising you that this method is going to change your life or fix anything. I just want to put it out there for the readers whose brain just does not work with the other method. If I have to sacrifice the way that I am able to care for myself and love myself for the sake of accomplishing a S.M.A.R.T goal, then the world can keep their S.M.A.R.T.’s. I’ll get there when I get there, and I’ll love the journey instead of hating it and myself.