Goal setting is one way to measure your progress towards wellness.
Having goals is important at any time, but they’re especially important during your pregnancy. Goals help you to stay focused on what’s ahead of you. Setting goals during your pregnancy can make the day to day seem more manageable, and give you something to strive towards.
Our coaches are like to use a strategy called SMART Goals, to establish realistic and measurable goals that you can maintain throughout your pregnancy journey. The letters in SMART each represent criteria for establishing effective goals.
“S” Stands for “Specific”
It’s important that your goal isn’t too broad. Making your goals specific will ensure that you can take actionable steps towards achieving them. For example, a goal of “having a healthy pregnancy” has many facets, and it’s hard to tackle all of them at once. Instead, try setting a more specific goal, like walking for 30 minutes, 3 days a week. You’ll find that when goals are more specific, they’re much easier to meet.
“M” Stands for “Measurable”
Being able to measure your progress is one of the most rewarding parts of setting goals. Seeing yourself progress over time, and slowly inch closer to that end goal is such a satisfying feeling. By measuring our progress, we can see how quickly we’re moving towards the goals we set. A benefit of goals being specific, is that it gives you criteria to measure against. Let’s go back to that goal of walking for 30 minutes, 3 days a week. You’d want to measure how many days a week you’re actually walking, and for how long you’re doing it. If you find that you’re consistently not meeting your goals, that’s okay too! It just means your goal needs to be more realistic, which we’ll dive into soon.
“A” Stands for “Achievable“
Once you establish a goal, you’ll want to begin acting on it. It can be helpful to write down the steps you can take to achieve your goal, so you can clearly define your path forward.
“R” Stands for “Realistic”
When setting a goal, it’s important to keep realistic constraints in mind. For example, if you’re currently not exercising at all, setting a goal to run for an hour every day is going to be really difficult to achieve. A more realistic goal, would be to walk for thirty minutes a day, 3 days a week. Making sure you’re factoring in real life constraints, like your abilities and resources is important to setting achievable goals.
“T” Stands for “Time Bound”
Constraining your goals to a period of time makes it easier to measure your progress. If you don’t meet your goal within the time constraints you set, that means it’s time to reevaluate your goal.
Want to learn more about SMART goals? Check out what Coach Courtney has to say, on our YouTube channel.
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