Setting your goals to live well with heart disease

Goals are the first step towards behaviour change, and habits are the key

Creating heart-healthy habits can help you to live a long and healthy life with heart disease. Setting SMART goals can help you stay motivated and see improvements as they happen.

SMART goals are statements about changes you want to make and ways to fulfill them. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. They can help you focus on the healthy changes you want to achieve.

• Specific: What do you want to achieve? Where? Who is involved?
• Measurable: By how much? How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
• Achievable: Can it be done? How?
• Relevant: Why is it important to you or your health?
• Time-bound: By when? For how long?

For example, if your goal is to increase daily physical activity in order to improve heart health, then you might like to break down the goal like this:

*Example physical activity goal only.

You might also set goals like the examples below:

• Starting tomorrow, I will add one serving to fruit to my daily breakfast.
• This month I will record my blood pressure at home three times per week.

Choose goals that are important to you and your heart recovery. And don’t forget to celebrate your successes along the way, no matter how small!

You might start with a broad goal like quitting smoking, but then break this into smaller, specific goals like cutting down on the number of cigarettes per week. Think of what you can achieve and control. Remind yourself why these goals are important to you and be consistent. Consistency is crucial for achieving your goals.

Share your goals with your doctor and other healthcare professionals. This will help them understand what is important to you. They may be able to assist you with achieving your goals.

Try setting your own SMART heart-health goals, using the guide below. You might choose to print out the goals you have set for yourself and keep them on your desk or fridge door as a reminder.