How to Launch a Teen: Goals Are Not Rules

Fourteen years before Doran outlined SMART rules, Aaron T. Beck, in his treatise on cognitive therapy for depression, advocated defining goals in terms of specific behaviors rather than in global terms: what I want to do rather than what I want to be. He described vague or and unrealistic goals as a potential source of punitively self-critical thinking. Beck prescribed the accomplishment of a series of relevant yet modest goals as a means to reduce self-doubt. Recent research at the Beck Institute included goal setting as a primary ingredient of self-care methods for medical students.

It's important to remember, in the face of all this emphasis I'm putting on goal setting, that goals are not rules.  It is not necessary that they be things you should or must do.  You make them, and you unmake them.  There are many reasons to modify or put aside a goal.  Life is full of changes, and what we want will change as we meet new people, new opportunities and experiences shift our perspective, and economic trends or governmental policies or technological advances alter the future.