Yesterday I talked about the need to Take Action to Achieve Your Dreams. I spoke very briefly about some general dreams that I have. I want to expand a little on the topic of specific dreams, because it is very important to make your dreams as S.M.A.R.T. as possible.

S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym used to define your dreams and goals in a way that makes them more likely to attain them. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Action -Oriented, Reasonable and TimeOriented.

I will touch on each one over the next few postings, but today I want to talk about “Specific”

When you are writing down your goals, it is best to be as specific about the goal as possible. One of the reasons for this is so that you have a way of knowing if you have actually attained your goal or not. For instance, you might want to be rich. But without defining what rich means to you, you may continue straining to attain more and more money and wealth and not feel that you have attained the goal.

Without specifics you cannot know how far you are along your path you are towards your goal. Without knowing you are making progress, you may find it easy to lose interest in the goal and stop working towards it.

When you first decide on a goal or dream, you do not need to worry about specifics immediately, but as you move towards the goal, you will need to be more and more specific. Using the rich example, you might start off by listing, “becoming rich” as a goal. This alone may be what it takes to get you started investigating the strategies you will use to make that happen. However, over time you will need to add more details for actual amounts you want and in what forms and from what sources.

For example, I keep my list of goals on a spreadsheet under different sections or categories. These are the areas of my life that I most want achievement. When I start out, I list very generic goals with few specifics. Over time, I do a little research on each one to decide what further details are important. Let’s take the example of a buying a new car. What kind of car do you want? What year? What colour? What features? Is there anything else specific that you can think of?

The more effort you put into adding detail for your goal, the more real that goal with become for you. The more real it becomes, the more effort you will put into making it a reality.