“If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.”

Chuck Palahniuk nails it with that one. Need proof? Just think of the last time you asked a friend where they wanted to go for dinner…

Sure they said they’re up for anything and told you to pick something. But then they shoot down every single one of your suggestions. It’s a perfect example of not knowing what you want and ending up with a lot you don’t.

“Ew. Anywhere but there.”

“Nah. I just had Mexican.”

“Hmm. I’m not really feeling pizza.”

Side note: if you’re with someone that isn’t feeling pizza on any given night, you probably want to reconsider that entire relationship. Just saying.

Before long, you’re in The Notebook.

It’s a frustrating conversation. But completely avoidable. All you have to do is know what you want. It’s a principle that applies to so much more than figuring out what to do on a Friday night. It can help you get the most out of your job, relationships with family and friends, as well as fitness.

If you know what you want, you set yourself up to get it.

Goal setting is a key step in turning wants into realities. There’s a problem, though. So many goals set you up for failure instead of success.

How Goals Set You Up For Failure

We’ve all heard that setting goals is important. But goal setting isn’t always the golden child of success it’s made out to be.

Sometimes we fail because of our goals. The likelihood of your success is poor when your goals are poor.

We’ll set goals with the best of intentions—to learn, grow, and/or progress. At first, we’re fired up to get started and hit the ground running. A few weeks later the fire and passion we had begins to fade. Even if you really wanted to hit your goal and look good naked, nachos and Netflix become much more exciting than greens and gym time.

If we’re not careful, goals are nothing more than express tickets to failure.

Is there anything inherently wrong with wanting to look good naked? Not at all. I’ve helped people do it for years.

It may not be a bad thing, but it is a bad goal. For starters, what does it even mean? I’ve had countless people tell me they want to look good naked. Because that could mean something different to everyone, I ask them what they mean. This is what I hear: “I dunno. Just look good naked.” The sarcastic in me always wants to retort… Of course. That makes so much more sense. Thanks for the clarification.

Ambiguity is a tell tale sign of a goal you can’t achieve.

If you set a goal you can’t define, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Another common mistake is going too big.

Growing up, I wanted to be a high school football star. Football was big at my high school. And I dreamed of being the next star receiver or punishing linebacker for the Hart Indians. But there was a problem. In high school, I was an unathletic chubster. I was better at playing bass in the orchestra than playing ball on the gridiron. I wasn’t gifted athletically or physically. Being smaller, slower, and weaker made my first (and only) year playing high school football a painfully miserable experience.

It was hard—especially as a 14-year-old—to realize that my goal of being a star simply wasn’t possible riding the bench.

If you set a goal you can’t achieve, you’re setting yourself up for failure. (Bt-dubs, high school wasn’t just a sob story of broken dreams. Eventually, I focused on what I was good at—music—and had a blast.)

Avoiding ambiguous, impossible goals is simple—set smart goals.

The Fix: Setting SMART Goals

The goal isn’t the problem. It’s how you set them. Luckily, somebody smarter than me came up with an acronym for goal setting—S.M.A.R.T. Setting smart goals paints a picture that’d make Bob Ross proud. When you understand exactly what you want, how to get there becomes crystal clear. And then you get to kick it with all the happy little trees after you succeed in achieving your goal.

Here’s what it stands for:

Specific

The more specific you get, the better your goal will be. It’s that simple. Saying, “I want to lose weight,” is a goal that is not specific. How much weight do you want to lose? Do you want to just lose weight or lose fat? Because, there is a difference. If you want to lose fat, are you measuring that in pounds lost or body fat percentage dropped? The list of clarifying questions goes on…

Saying, “I want to lose 15 pounds of fat,” on the other hand? Now we’re talking. Specificity gives you a clear idea of what you want success to look like.

First, you have to get specific with your goals.

Measurable

You need some sort of way to track your progress (and eventual success) with any goal. If you don’t have a way to measure your goal, how will you ever know when you’ve achieved it?

When it comes fitness goals, this is often done with scales or body fat. But it doesn’t stop there. Maybe you want to deadlift 2x bodyweight, squat over 200 pounds, or even just fit into your skinny jeans. There are countless ways to make your goals measurable.

But be sure to pick something that’s meaningful to you.

For me, I don’t care about fitting into a pair of skinny jeans—my thighs are too thunderous for skinny jeans anyways. I do care about my deadlift and squat, though. So I often set goals based around new squat and deadlift PRs. If that doesn’t do it for you that’s fine. Find what fires you up and get after it.

After you set a specific goal, you must make it measurable.

Attainable

I believe that you can achieve anything you want in life. Maybe you have that attitude, too. That makes this step really easy. When you believe you can achieve anything, you don’t feel like any goal is unattainable.

But some people are on other end of that spectrum. When you feel like your goals are unattainable, you’ve lost the battle and the war. You want to set goals that force you to stretch and grow. But you also need to believe with an unshakable conviction that you can do it. That’s what setting an attainable goal is all about—believing you can succeed.

If you can’t achieve your goal—or don’t believe you can—you never will. Make sure your goal is attainable.

Realistic

This keeps you from getting carried away. Want to set a goal to make a million dollars? Cool. Want to make it by tomorrow afternoon? That simply isn’t realistic for most people. This is where you give your goals a reality check. Make sure they aren’t completely unrealistic. Attainable and realistic are similar, but attainable goals aren’t always realistic.

Attainability is about believing you can. Realism is about knowing it’s possible.

Recently, I set a big goal. One that I wholeheartedly believe I can achieve (read: it’s attainable). But I thought it might be borderline unrealistic. So I asked a mentor. He said, “Yes, it’s realistic, but a stretch.” That’s exactly what I wanted. Now it’s off to the races.

Impossibly unrealistic goals do nothing but set yourself up for failure. Make sure your goal is realistic.

Time-bound

Give yourself a deadline. Any goal you set needs a specific timetable. It needs to be time-bound.

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If you set a goal that has no end date, the work required to achieve that goal will expand to fill the allotted time. When you set a goal with no end in sight, you’ll end up working on that goal endlessly.

Let’s say you want to lose 15 pounds of fat. Great. But by when? Set a date and be specific. You could say, for example, I’m going to lose 15 pounds of fat in the next eight weeks. (Just don’t forget to keep your timeline realistic.) Now you’ve got a timetable. There’s some urgency.

Plus, now you can break the goal down into benchmarks and milestones along the way. If you want to lose 15 pounds in eight weeks, that means you’re looking at losing 1.875 pounds per week. Now you’re able to track your progress and celebrate little victories along the way to your main goal. (This is huge.)

No matter what your goal is, it’s nothing without a deadline. Make sure your goal is time-bound.

Secure Your Success

This is so much more than simply setting a goal. Setting SMART goals helps us create a roadmap to get from point A (where we are) to point B (where we want to go).

All that’s left is successful execution.

Luckily success has a secret. And I talk about that secret here. Take advantage of the secret and you’re 33% more likely to succeed with any goal.

You know how to set meaningful goals.

Click here, discover success’s secret, and make your goals a reality.