On any wellness journey, an open mind and intrinsic motivation are keys to success. In my last article – Well… How is my Wellness Actually, I shared my own personal wellness evaluation. I discussed the methodologies I used in an attempt to quantify my wellness as well as the rethinking process that was crucial to getting results I believed were representative of me.
“Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable”‘ – John Wooden
Now as I’m looking ahead to the next stage of my Wellness journey, i.e. actually learning and implementing strategies to improve my wellness, I am realizing that each part of this journey is hard. It requires time, focus, and energy to create an action plan and optimism and enthusiasm to stick with it. If you’re in the position where you rate particularly low, say a 1 or a 2 in a specific Wellness category, that may be demotivating. But we always need to remind ourselves that clarity in our situation today enables us to make a better tomorrow. We are capable of creating the life that we dream of and make each day the best day of our lives!
In order to get from here (my current Wellness) to “there” (my desired wellness), I had to go back to learning the basics of goal setting –>
What is a SMART goal?
A SMART goal is a well-defined objective that is:
- Specific: Clearly outlines what you want to achieve.
- Measurable: Includes criteria to track progress and success.
- Achievable: Realistic and attainable within your capabilities.
- Relevant: Aligns with your broader objectives and is meaningful to you.
- Time-bound: Has a set deadline or timeframe for completion.
For example, “I want to walk 30 minutes every day for the next month to improve my health.”
How many SMART Wellness goals should I set?
When setting Wellness goals, it is important to remember that Wellness is a lifelong marathon rather than a sprint. For that reason it is important to set a manageable number of goals at any given time to avoid being overwhelmed and to build positive, maintainable, momentum.
A common guideline for goal setting in general is to have between 3-5 goals simultaneously.
Where should I start?
To determine the right goals to set, I started by identifying the categories with lower scores that I had marked as higher priority. However, it’s important to remember that we know ourselves best, and our lower-scoring areas may not always be our top priorities at the moment. Trusting our intuition is crucial—if we’ve identified something as high priority, that’s likely where we should focus first. This holds true even if the score in that area is higher compared to others, as long as we’re not avoiding more challenging goals.
How can I track these goals?
Applying a popular business goal tracking methodology here, setting and monitoring OKRs can be a great way to set goals and track progress. OKR stands for Objective and Key Result where your objective may be to ‘Increase my Financial Wellness from 5—>6” and one Key Result may be a SMART goal such ‘Spend 2 hours a week for the next month watching financial literacy videos on youtube’.
To start out, you could set 2 objectives this quarter with 2-3 SMART key results each.
What about reflection?
Weekly or monthly you could evaluate your progress. Are you on track? Do your goals need to be adjusted or reprioritized? Then quarterly, mid-year, and end of year you can do a more in depth reflection to evaluate your overall progress. Reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and why. Use these insights to plan for the next quarter, 6 months, or year!
Here is a snapshot of my own personal goals that I’ve set to improve my Wellness this Quarter and this year!
