TRSM students and Peer Academic Coaches Julia Siciliano (4th year BTM major/HR minor), Karan Sharma (4th year Global Management major) and Maria Beauts (4th year BTM major) offer advice to their fellow students embarking on a new year:
As January comes to an end, we hope that you’re staying on track with your New Year’s resolutions. If you’re not, that’s okay!
The start of a new year is a great opportunity to not only set goals, but to learn how you can set SMARTER goals in order to achieve them throughout the year. Now that you have worked all of January to set your goals and map out how to achieve them, February is a good time to self-reflect on what resolutions you’ve created for yourself in the new year that you want to pursue further.
Having a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely (SMART) goal is a great way to start refining your goals. Having a SMARTER goal becomes more beneficial as you work towards it.
The “E” and “R” in SMARTER stands for “evaluated” and “re-adjusted,” respectively. One important key to making sure we stick with our goals is to evaluate them as you work towards them. Checking in with yourself to make sure any given goal is still relevant and valuable to you or if it needs to be adjusted to become more effective. This stage, if neglected, can leave you wondering about why you are working towards certain goals, and discouragement can easily seep in. Take this opportunity for every goal you set to evaluate how it fits into the big picture of your life and aspiration and adjust accordingly to make your goals helpful and relevant to you and your growth.
A lot of people realize that their new year’s resolutions are not realistic. Don’t feel discouraged by that; it is an opportunity to figure out what you value and want to focus on. Go back to the metaphorical (or literal) drawing board to draft new goals and make them SMARTER than before. Adapting to our environment and adjusting what you want to work on is part of the journey of achieving your goals. We are all capable of accomplishing what we strive for. Positive self-talk and perseverance will help us get there.
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