People often associate wealth with money and possessions, but wealth is much more accurately defined as the leverage or power to consistently experience the type of existence you prefer. Money and possessions have come to be associated with wealth because—among other reasons—money is often necessary to participate in the types of activities many people assume they want to experience (leisure and luxury), and possessions are often indicative of a surplus of said money.

However, it could be easily argued that a practicing Buddhist or ascetic could consider themselves enormously wealthy/successful without any money or possessions whatsoever. To highlight this distinction, I like to use the terms Foundational Wealth and Foundational Success instead. I define Foundational Wealth (in pseudo-economics terms) as the currency you value at the deepest level, and Foundational Success as having a strong equity position in said currency.

If you’re honest with yourself about your personal definitions of Foundational Wealth, you can more precisely and consistently trace your motivations to their deeper roots. This will help you to better understand your goals and decisions, and make intentional choices that serve those motivations. This exploration can be both immensely valuable and profoundly humbling.

If you’ve already explored what drives you (Foundational Wealth) and learned how to create Credos, Missions, and Visions around the goals you value, your goals are defined. Now it's time to refine them. That's where M-SMART Goals come in.

Learn Spanish isn’t really a goal because you don’t have any criteria by which you can say you achieved it. Almost everyone in the United States, South and Central America, and Europe technically speaks some Spanish—most people have probably said or at least heard the word “adios.” Furthermore, even highly educated native Spanish speakers realistically speak only part of the language; I doubt many people know every single Spanish word, much like you and I don’t know every single English word. Knowing a language isn’t really a black or white thing.

So, at what point can you say you “learned Spanish?”