By Maria McEvoy

Imagine a Venn diagram. Now draw the commonalities between a fitness trainer and a life coach. The circles would almost completely overlap.

The way you coach your clients and the way I do share a common language. This is why I launched Coach The Trainers (CTT).

I design up-skilling workshops for FitPros. And one of the subjects I specialize in is goal setting. The term SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-Bound) goal has been around for decades. I’m sure you learned about this acronym in your various certifications.

The Science Behind Setting Goals

As a life coach and a SMART goal specialist, I have spent time re-thinking and updating this acronym. Let’s look a bit at some recent research. How can we use it to create SMART goals 2.0? And how can you use it as a tool for setting goals with your clients as I do with mine?

Emily Balcetis, a social psychologist at NYU, has learned that when we properly set goals, our blood pressure experiences a boost. But the difficulty level of that goal makes a significant difference.

If the goal is easy to achieve, we get a nice spike. If it’s a little hard but feels like a doable challenge, we get an even higher spike. This is indicated by more excitement in the body and the sympathetic nervous system.

And if the goal is seen as impossible, our system writes it off (“this is too difficult so I won’t even try). Indicated by a decrease in BP. I call this the GOAL-DILOCKS (cute huh?) of goal setting – it can’t be too easy, can’t be too hard and has to be just right.

Dopamine also plays a large role in goal setting. Dopamine is released in the brain when we expect a reward. It’s that exciting feeling we get when we are about to be rewarded.

Studies show that reward-seeking behavior such as achieving a goal increases dopamine levels in the brain. Learning to ride a bike or play an instrument, summiting a mountain, and nailing a PR all release dopamine in our brain.

With every step your client takes towards goal achievement, they release dopamine, get a sense of pleasure, feel focused and more motivated.

Setting Goals: Managing The Downside

But what happens if they fail to meet their goal? The brain then steps in as the ultimate punisher and cuts off the dopamine drip and when that happens it does not feel good.

Your clients’ brains have been treating the goal as a possession. They have absorbed and woven this goal into their self-image and identity. So, failing to meet the goal leads to feeling loss, anxiety, fear, sadness, etc.

So, your client goes from feeling like they are on top of the world to deflated in no time.

My job as a life coach and yours, as a trainer, is to help the client identify ways to prevent that from happening and it’s all in how the goal is broken down. As a trainer, you must help your client plan for the inevitable obstacles or self-sabotage on the way to goal achievement.

We know that your clients’ goals have to be “just right” to encourage the “just right” physiological response in blood pressure. And we also know that dopamine is released when we set goals. I’ve learned that our brain can act as the ultimate punisher sabotaging our clients’ progress.

How do we specifically go about setting goals to take full advantage of this knowledge and maximize success? That’s where SMART goals 2.0 step in.

Breaking Down SMART Goals To Make Them Smarter

S stands for SPECIFIC. A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. For example, when I was training to climb Kilimanjaro for my 50th birthday I said, I am going to summit on 8/11/15 vs someday.

I have found that “specific” is not enough. The “S” must also stand for personal significance and the strategy you and your client will implement to get them there.

“M” stands for MEASURABLE. You and your client establish criteria for measuring progress towards the goal you have set together. And you know as well as I do, that these goals may have little to do with numbers and everything to do with non-scale victories.

This is why I strongly believe that the goals must also be meaningful and motivational. Just the thought of achieving the goal must kick in that much-needed dopamine drip. To ensure my clients and I are aligned on the goal they have identified, I use scalable questions. Such as “on a scale of 1-10, one being “not at all” and ten being “I really can’t wait to start!”, how meaningful is this goal to you?

If they are at a 5 or 6, then how meaningful is it to them? That’s powerful information and a conduit to re-thinking the goal.

“A” is for ACHIEVABLE. Yes, it must feel achievable, but it must also be ambitious . Remember earlier we spoke about blood pressure and how the goal has to be hard enough but not too hard?

Everybody wants a gold medal, but few people are willing to train like an Olympian. Your client has to be willing to answer the questions: how much pain am I willing to handle? What price am I willing to pay? How comfortable can they get being uncomfortable?

“R” is for REALISTIC and I am going to add rewarding to ensure the continued flow of dopamine.

“T” stands for Time Bound. For a goal to be achieved there has to be a sense of urgency. But we need to take that a step further with our clients. Knowing they have to accomplish a task by a certain time makes them accountable.

Accountability: Why It’s The Key To Goal Setting

Accountability in goal setting is well established and very important.

The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) did a study on accountability and found that the probability of successfully completing a goal is: 10% if you hear an idea 25% if you consciously decide to adopt it 40% if you decide you will do it 50% if you plan how you will do it 65% if you commit to someone else you will do it 95% if you have a specific accountability appointment with the person to whom you committed

As a coach, I contract for how the client would like to be held accountable, if at all. Our clients need to make sure that they choose their accountability partner/coach wisely. Success partners are about excitement, energy, and movement. Not perfection.

Skilled coaches measure the “gain” and movement made toward big dreams, not the “gap” of what the client is not doing well enough.

Encourage your client to take careful inventory of the people around them.

As an accountability partner, you do not have to understand the “why” of the client’s goal, you must simply value the goal because it’s important to them.

Finally, I will close with one of my favorite quotes: “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals” – Zig Zigler