How to create SMART goals

You are at stage four of the process of setting God-sized goals. The first three steps were:

1. Ask God for a picture of the future.
2. Create a vision,
3. Ask God for a promise about what he will do to execute the vision.

Now you need to turn this large vision into tangible, smaller steps. Since I am a big picture thinker, sometimes the process of setting smaller, specific goals to complete a project can feel laborious. I want to jump right in and start doing something.But the discipline of creating SMART goals will help you sketch a roadmap that will guide you through the process of vision execution.Anybody who has been to any training or read any book on goal-setting has probably learned how to make SMART goals. If you search the internet for SMART goals, you will get 401 million results. I don't want to repeat what has already been said.But I do want to articulate how setting SMART goals is different when you have already asked God for a picture of the future, created a vision, and clarified God's role in executing the vision.You can read this page for a general description of what SMART goals are. I will be clarifying how SMART goals are influenced when you have been through the first three steps of the process of setting God-sized goals:

1. Specific - Your vision at this point may be so far out in the future and involve such a large part of your life, that it may not feel specific. You can make your vision more specific by outlining specific goals. Break your vision up into multiple, bite-size chunks. Set goals for each of these parts.
2. Measurable - When you prayed, you may have gotten a sense of the largeness of your vision. But at this point, it probably doesn't have any numbers attached to it. It can be scary to assign numbers to something that was just a picture. Imagine if Abraham tried to assign a number to the amount of stars in the sky. The process of putting numbers to your goals is a way of imagining tangibly how the future would look if you could count it. It's a powerful, clarifying process. Numbers help you create something measurable, so that you can later accurately assess whether you reached your goal.
3. Achievable - The first three steps of the goal-setting process were designed to help you discern what is achievable with God. It may not feel achievable in your own strength, but God has given you a sense of what He will do to make the unachievable achievable. Designing goals is still an act of faith, as you trust that what you heard from God really is possible.
4. Relevant - As you have created a larger vision and have a sense of what the future will look like, you will want to make sure that the goals you are setting are leading towards that future outcome. Test your goals by assessing whether they will bring you closer to the vision that God has given you.
5. Time-bound - Because you originally asked God a time-bound question (what will this area of my life look like in this amount of time?), you will already be operating under a sense of when your vision should be complete. However, you might need to break that time-frame up into smaller blocks. If you asked God what something will look like in six months, you may need to make one-month or two-month goals to help you get towards that overall vision.

As you aim to create SMART goals to reach the vision God has given you, don't be afraid to be creative. The SMART goal-setting process is something that you will modify along the way. These SMART goals will get you going in the right direction.How has it been going through the process of creating God-sized goals?