In my last blog post, Empowering Your Quit: Building Self-Efficacy for Tobacco Cessation, I wrote about self-efficacy, which is having confidence in being able to accomplish a task, such as quitting tobacco. Part of having higher self-efficacy is meeting goals that you have set for yourself. When you meet your goals, your self-efficacy may go up, which can lead to making more ambitious goals.
However, the opposite can also happen when your self-efficacy may go down in failing to meet your goal. In my previous blog, I stated, “If a person has high self-efficacy, they tend to have a deep commitment to their goals, view challenges as something to be mastered, and recover more quickly from setbacks. If a person has a weaker self-efficacy, they tend to avoid the task, believe it is beyond their capability, or focus more on personal failings and negative outcomes.”
In the article, Goal Setting for Behavior Change in Primary Care: An Exploration and Status Report, Bodenheimer states that when people create their own goals and can achieve them, their energy, performance, self-efficacy, and skill-building are all improved.
What stood out to me the most in this article was that “A person needs to make their own goals.” When someone else sets a goal for you, talks you into setting a goal that is not achievable, or you have no idea how to accomplish that goal, the chances of being successful could be compromised.
Also, if you feel that you are being robbed of something (i.e., the goal-setting process is not collaborative), it can affect your attitude and motivation toward working on that goal.
So, let’s talk briefly about goal setting. When setting a goal, a helpful mnemonic to remember is SMART, which stands for:
Here are specific points to remember that can help with being more successful in achieving that goal:
What are some specific, measurable, and attainable short-term actionable steps you have made or can make, to help you achieve your goal of quitting tobacco?
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