Yesterday I achieved my goal of attending 50 yoga classes in 2024. I thought I might get weepy there at the end, but it was too challenging of a flow for tears. I did almost lose it when I thanked my teacher, Julie, for helping me reach my goal. I shared my goal with a lot of people this year. I counted every class I went to. I also fell off the wagon hard for a few months in Q3 and nearly didn’t make my goal.
I frequently fall off of wagons. I’m told everyone does and to climb back on, but I’m stubborn. I take every fall as concrete evidence that the wagon ride in question is DOOMED. I have frequent, internal (and silly) monologues about it. “Don’t you see? I can’t ride this wagon. I can’t ride any wagon. Wagons are for other people, but I have to walk the rest of the way. I can’t do it because I’ll just fall off again!” My self efficacy and I have a long way to go.
Knowing that I tend to take set backs hard, I decided on my birthday this year to craft my resolution of more regular and frequent exercise into a goal that was SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. I specified the type of exercise I wanted to participate in: yoga classes. And for a hot second my goal sounded like, “Attend a yoga class every week.” But I know me. One week of illness or vacation could derail me and my goal for the entire year. There’s no flexibility in the word “every” and that for me translates to unachievable. Write every day? Never going to happen. Exercise five times every week? I might as well never start. A date night every weekend? Yeah, well we’re booked solid every week in January, so that’s not going to happen.
I’m striking “every” from my new year’s resolutions. Every isn’t achievable. It may be measurable, but it’s not going to inspire me or help me change my behavior.
“Attend a yoga class 52 times this year.” That could work. It’s specific, measurable, relevant to my aim of more regular and frequent exercise, and it is time-bound. I had a year to do it, but for grace and for achievability I decided 50 was a better number to track.
I did a lot of yoga in December. Sixteen of my fifty classes were done this month. And while I definitely wish I had maintained my regular and frequent practice, I’m so glad that I had this experience. I’ve never practiced yoga multiple days in a row, and I had a stretch of 6 days straight of yoga in early December. It was life changing. Usually, it takes weeks of hard work for me to see or feel any positive changes in my body, but to go from I can’t fully extend my legs to blissed-out with my legs up the wall in six days was eye-popping.
I’m reviewing some of my other goals that I made in 2024. Write everyday was one of them. It wasn’t specific–what kind of writing are we talking about? Emails? Grocery lists? Rough drafts? Revisions? Novels? Short stories? Blog posts? And while the frequency of writing was measurable, without more specifics “write everyday” was hardly relevant to my goal of publishing my next novel–which I still haven’t done. Instead, I wrote three short stories this year and a novella, which were super relevant to my SMART goals around growing my audience and also really relevant to my artistic expression.
I set a goal to read 50 books in 2024. Another SMART goal. I’m stalled out at 46, but I have a long plane ride coming up and a kindle full of good reads. I think I might just make it.
Do crafting SMART goals help you achieve your dreams? Have you ever given up on a goal because it wasn’t SMART? Have you found a better means of improving your self efficacy? Should we all just keep eating Christmas cookies until February?