Hello and welcome to the Mindful Kind podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Cable, author of the

Mindfulkind book, Mindfulness Teacher and blogger at Rachelcable.com. Each week this podcast will bring

meaningful tips, tools and strategies so you can manage stress and live more mindfully in the modern world.

Hello and welcome to episode 266 of the Mindful Kind podcast.

I'm so excited to chat with you about open goals today.

If you've ever found smart goals, which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant

and time-based, if you've ever found them too restrictive and difficult to achieve,

then open goals can be an amazing alternative to help you gently make meaningful changes in

your life.

First of all, let me share a little story with you.

So it's 2011 and I'm sitting in a health behavior class during my psychology degree. I'm learning about smart goals and how they can

help people create realistic intentions to potentially increase their chances of success.

My teacher said, when you set a goal, make sure it's specific

and that you can measure it. Check that it's achievable and relevant. Add time constraints to the

goal too, so you won't procrastinate. Now fast forward to 2021 and I have talked about smart goals a lot.

I've helped clients set smart goals.

I've done a podcast episode about it.

The episode number was 81 and it was called Mindfulness Goals and Being Smart.

I've set multiple smart goals myself and achieved them.

For example, this week I'll practice yoga every weekday for 30 minutes per session, so five

sessions in total.

It was a good little smart goal and I achieved it when I really committed and persisted when

...