My Smart Goal Analysis

I have chosen exercising as my smart goal for the fall semester of my Psychology class. After working on my goal for weeks, I have observed the outcome of my exercising goal. There were some positive changes and some negative changes that I have noticed changes me. Even that I was not able to keep up with my goal, I learned about the reasons and how can I improve my plan to actually achieve my goal.
My smart goal was exercising to improve my exercise skills, health, and stress management. Exercising was not just about doing some activities, but it was the effort I am doing to shape and improve my health, fitness, and mental thoughts and behaviors by watching myself, my actions and my decisions. I chose exercising as my smart goal because
I noticed the difference in my friends’ daily life as they started to exercise; they were able to function better, having a positive energy that keeps them in a good and happy mood without any stress. Similarly, when I started to exercise, I noticed the difference in the way I act, make decisions and manage my school work without being stressed about what I have to do. Exercising helps me to be more energetic, have a better mood, and maintain cognitive functions. Cognition is “all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating” (Norton). Exercising improved my behavior, thoughts, emotions and physical body. It helped me to think critically and make decisions dependent on my experiences and knowledge. Besides that having
Shaping is “the operant conditioning technique of shaping consists of reinforcing behaviors that are increasingly similar to the desired behavior” (Grison, Heatherton, and Gazzaniga 212). Shaping is my desired behavior to exercise, have a healthy body, and be mentally active. In order to shape myself to be able to exercise, I should start sleeping early and work on managing my stress by organizing the time to be able to do everything. At the same time, I might need to change my exercising plan to begin first with lit bit of stretching and other activities until my body gets used to work out and then start walking. This will allow me to exercise anytime, anywhere without worrying about waking up early in the morning and also I can change the exercising time to be in the afternoon rather than in the morning. Although, I decided to award myself for every time I exercise, which is a positive reinforcement “the addition of a stimulus to increase the probability that a behavior will be repeated” (Grison, Heatherton, and Gazzaniga 214). In order to increase the ability of my exercising goal to be repeated, I decided to reward myself with a piece of chocolate for every time I do some stretches or walking. That will allow me to exercise more; as it will motivate me to keep exercising and achieve my smart