- Lewis Bartelle
- Mar 22
Updated: May 2
SMART Goals: Turning the Overwhelming Into the Achievable
Hey friends, Lewis here.
When I first started my stroke recovery journey, I felt completely lost. Not just physically — although that was its own mountain — but mentally. The whole process felt like staring at a giant, complex map with no destination programmed in. No route. No starting point. Just an overwhelming expanse of everything that needed to happen with no clear idea of where to even begin.
I knew I wanted to get better. But here is the thing nobody tells you: “get better” is not a goal. It is a wish. And wishes do not have action plans.
If you are sitting in that same fog right now — that heavy, directionless feeling where recovery looks like one enormous impossible thing — I want you to know something first. That feeling is completely normal. It does not mean you are weak or behind or doing this wrong. It means you are human, and something enormous just happened to you.
But I also want to hand you the tool that changed everything for me. The simple framework that took the overwhelming and turned it into a sequence of daily, winnable steps.
It is called the SMART method. And it became one of the most important pieces of my entire recovery puzzle. Determination)
Why “Get Better” Is Not a Goal
Before we get into the framework itself, let me explain why vague goals do not work — because understanding this is half the battle.
Saying “I want to walk better” is like saying “I want to drive somewhere nice.” It sounds good. It feels motivating in the moment. But how do you know when you have succeeded? How do you track progress? How do you know what to actually do today?
You don’t. And that uncertainty is exhausting.
Recovery is fueled by progress. Progress requires clear targets. And clear targets require a plan specific enough that you know exactly what you are doing, when you are doing it, and how you will know when it is done.
That is where SMART comes in. Think of it as programming the GPS. You still have to drive — but now you know where you are going.
I lay out the full goal setting framework in Beyond Shattered, including how I used it to work back from nine months in inpatient rehab toward getting behind the wheel again. If you want the complete roadmap, grab your copy on Amazon. But right now let me walk you through each piece of the framework and show you exactly how to apply it to your recovery today.
S — Specific: What Exactly Will I Do?
Your goal needs to be precise. Not a direction — a destination.
Instead of: “I want to improve my arm.”
Try: “I will practice lifting a coffee mug to my mouth three times during my morning routine.”
See the difference? The second version tells your brain exactly what pathway to rebuild. It eliminates the daily question of what am I supposed to be working on right now. You wake up and you know.
That clarity alone removes a layer of mental load that stroke survivors simply cannot afford to waste.
Specific goals move the needle. Vague goals move nothing.
M — Measurable: How Will I Track It?
If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. And more importantly — you cannot celebrate it.
Instead of: “I want to read more.”
Try: “I will read one paragraph without losing my place, three days this week.”
That second version gives you something concrete to mark done. And marking things done matters enormously in stroke recovery — because the Victory Journal principle I talk about throughout The Word is built on exactly this. Daily, specific, irrefutable proof that the work is paying off. Numbers you can point to on the days when everything feels like it is standing still.
When the numbers go up — even slightly — that is neuroplasticity doing its job. And seeing it happen is one of the most powerful motivators on this entire journey.
A — Achievable: Is This Realistic Right Now?
Here is where a lot of survivors accidentally set themselves up for frustration rather than momentum. We all want to run before we can walk — sometimes literally. But a goal that is out of reach today does not inspire you. It defeats you.
Your goal needs to be challenging enough to matter and realistic enough to actually happen today.
If lifting the coffee mug is too much right now, your goal becomes: “I will move my hand two inches closer to the mug during my practice session.”
That is not settling. That is smart. That is the car guy in me talking — you do not rebuild an engine by trying to install the transmission before the block is ready. You work the process. You honor where you are right now and build from there.
Small wins create mental momentum. Mental momentum creates the confidence that carries you to the bigger wins. Every single piece matters.
R — Relevant: Does This Goal Actually Matter to Your Life?
Your goals need to be connected to something that genuinely matters to you — your real life, your real people, your real Why.
If being able to talk to your grandkids on the phone is your biggest motivation, your speech goal should reflect that.
Try: “I will practice my articulation exercises for ten minutes before I call my grandkids on Saturday.”
Now that goal has a face on it. It has a reason. And on the days when the exercises feel pointless and frustrating and endless — that face, that Saturday phone call — is what keeps you at the table.
Relevance is the bridge between effort and commitment. Build your goals on things that genuinely matter to you and they will hold up under pressure. Build them on things that do not and they will collapse the first time recovery gets hard. Which it will.
T — Time-Bound: When Will You Do This and By When?
A goal without a deadline is just a wish with better vocabulary.
Instead of: “I’ll try to walk more this week.”
Try: “I will walk twenty feet using my cane by Friday.”
The deadline creates urgency. Urgency creates focus. Focus creates action. And at the end of Friday you know exactly where you stand — you either hit it, or you learn something useful about what needs to adjust. Either outcome moves you forward. That is the point.
I practiced this principle in one of my favorite recovery wins — I had a goal of getting back behind the wheel. Specific, measurable, achievable in stages, deeply relevant to my independence, and time-bound by the milestones I set with my care team. I even used a PlayStation with a steering wheel controller and racing games as a driving simulator to practice coordination and reaction time between sessions. Unconventional? Maybe. Effective? I drove myself to an appointment and traded in my wheelchair for four wheels. So yes.
The Power of Small Goals Adding Up
Here is what happens when you start building your recovery around SMART goals: the whole thing transforms.
Suddenly you are not failing to “get better” — a target so vague it is impossible to hit. You are succeeding three times a day by lifting that mug. You are winning on Tuesday by reading that paragraph. You are making measurable, trackable, moments to celebrate progress every single day — progress your brain can feel and your confidence can build on.
That is neuroplasticity at work. Every small, specific, repeated effort is laying down new pathways. Every win — however modest it looks from the outside — is a piece of the puzzle clicking into place. And pieces add up. I know because I counted mine, one by one, over thirteen-plus years.
Be patient with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself the grace of starting smaller than feels significant — because consistency beats intensity every single time in stroke recovery.
And when you are ready to go deeper — when you want the full framework, the self care strategy, the visualization practice, and every other tool that helped me go from a six week coma and nine months in inpatient rehab to walking, driving, and building a life beyond the stroke — Beyond Shattered is waiting for you on Amazon.
Every chapter was written for the person who needed a roadmap and could not find one.
You are not lost anymore. You have a map. Now let’s program the GPS and get moving.
If you want to share your recovery journey with a community that truly gets it, come find us in Beyond The Shatter on Facebook. And if you are ready to let your story inspire someone else who is right where you were — the Army of Warriors program at BeyondtheShatter.com will give it a home. Always free. Always yours.
I am right here with you.
— Lewis
- Lewis Bartelle
- Mar 21
Updated: May 2
Why Recovery Is an Inside Job
Hey friends, Lewis here.
When a stroke first hits, you rely completely on the outside world. Therapists, doctors, medication, equipment — all of it is vital, all of it matters, and none of it should ever be taken for granted. These people are the experts, the map-makers, and the safety net. For everything they gave me — including my life — I am grateful every single day.
But here is the hard-earned truth that took me time to fully accept, and that I now believe with everything I have:
The ultimate progress has to come from within.
Nobody can want your recovery more than you do. Nobody can do the internal work for you. The best therapist in the world cannot rewire your brain — only you can, through focused, deliberate, daily effort that you choose. Not because someone scheduled it. Because you decided.
Recovery is an inside job. And the mindset that drives it is what I call The Hustle.
What The Hustle Actually Means
The Hustle is not about grinding yourself into the ground or showing up to every session with something to prove to the room. It is about something deeper and more sustainable than that.
It is about total ownership.
Ownership means you are not a passenger in your own recovery. You are not simply showing up and waiting for progress to be delivered to you. You are the CEO of your care — the one person in the room with the most at stake, the most to gain, and the most responsibility for what happens next.
I did not always operate this way. In the early months — six weeks in a coma, nine months in inpatient rehab, learning to shuffle ten feet in a pink gait belt while my daughters waited at the end of the hall — I was focused on survival. And that was exactly right for that season.
But at some point the season changes. And when it does, you have a choice to make. Are you going to keep waiting for recovery to happen to you? Or are you going to go get it?
Here is what total ownership actually looks like in practice:
Be the CEO of your care. Know your goals. Track your own progress. Ask your therapy team the hard questions — not just how did I do, but what should I be doing between now and next session to make the most of this? You are not just a patient receiving treatment. You are an active participant directing your own recovery. Nobody has more skin in this game than you do.
Practice on the off days. This is critical. Real gains do not only happen in the therapy room — they happen in between, in the quiet unseen moments when nobody is watching and you choose to do the work anyway. If your goal is hand mobility, pick up the TV remote with your affected hand. Wipe the counter. Reach for the glass yourself. Neuroplasticity does not have office hours.
Consistency is the currency of recovery and you are the one who decides how much to spend. I write about the full self-care and exercise approach in Beyond Shattered — including the bodyweight routines I used to shed 70 pounds and rebuild my strength from scratch. It is all in there if you want the complete picture.
Find your Why. Not the surface answer — the real one underneath it.
Not I want to get better, but the specific, deeply personal reason that makes getting better matter. For me it was getting back behind the wheel. Visiting survivors in that hospital as someone who had walked the whole path. Building something that could help the next person who wakes up in that bed with no roadmap. Write your Why down. Put it somewhere you will see it on your worst days. That Why is the engine — the thing that keeps the motor running when willpower alone runs dry.
Embrace the Fall — The Power of Failure
Now I want to talk about something that sounds completely backwards. Something that took me a while to make peace with and that I now consider one of the most important mindset shifts in all of recovery.
We have to learn to fail.
I know. You are exhausted by failing. You are tired of the gap between what you are trying to do and what your body will cooperate with. The last thing you want is someone telling you to lean into it.
But hear me out — because this reframe changes everything.
Think about a toddler learning to walk. They fall constantly. They wobble, they crash, they sit there looking confused, and then they get right back up and try again. Nobody calls it failing. We understand instinctively that the falling is the learning. Every crash is the brain and body figuring out something they will use on the very next attempt.
That is exactly what is happening when you fail in recovery. Failure is not an endpoint. It is feedback. It is the signal that you found the edge of your current capacity — which is precisely where growth lives. You cannot build a new road without first finding out where the old one ends.
Honestly? I want to see you fail. Because failure means you are pushing past comfortable. And comfortable is not where the progress is.
Here is what the real progression looks like — and I have lived every single step of it:
Try — and fail completely. You found the limit. Good. Now you know where to work.
Try again — and fail a little less. You adjusted. The brain took notes.
Try again — and stumble. You are almost there. Keep going.
Try again — and own it. Progress unlocked.
That chain — that persistent, stubborn, refuse-to-quit drive to be even slightly better than you were yesterday — that is what progress is actually made of. Not the big dramatic breakthroughs that make for a good story. The quiet, daily, cumulative result of choosing to try one more time when everything in you wants to stop.
Warriors and Gladiators — What Are Your True Colors
Every single person navigating stroke recovery is a Warrior. Let me say that clearly and mean it — just showing up for this journey, just getting out of bed and facing another day of this, is warrior-level courage. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, and do not tell yourself otherwise on the hard days.
But Warriors have levels.
Think of it on a scale of one to ten. Every survivor starts at baseline — a Warrior simply by virtue of still being in the fight. But some Warriors decide at some point that they want more than survival. They want mastery. They want to look back at what tried to take them out and say — not only did I survive that, I came back stronger because of it.
That is where Warriors become Gladiators.
A Gladiator does not just endure the arena. They own it. They are not defined by the circumstances that brought them there — the stroke, the diagnosis, the limitations, the loss. They are defined by the ferocity of their comeback. A Gladiator takes full ownership of their effort. They practice on the off days. They ask the hard questions. They see failure as feedback and use it to go further. They never quit.
Moments of crisis reveal true colors — how people respond when things get genuinely hard, how much they actually have in them when the pressure is on. This journey has put real pressure on you. And the fact that you are still here, still trying, still reading this and looking for ways to move forward — that tells me something important about what you are made of.
The Gladiator is already in you. I know it because you are still in this fight.
So here is my invitation: step into the arena. Take total ownership of your recovery. Demand daily progress from yourself — not because anyone is watching, not because it is scheduled, but because you have decided that you are worth the fight.
And when you are ready to go beyond the articles and get the full roadmap — every strategy, every tool, every honest account of what this journey really requires — Beyond Shattered is waiting for you on Amazon. I wrote it for the person sitting exactly where you are right now.
Own the Hustle. The arena is yours.
If you want to stand alongside other survivors who are in it with you every day, come find us in the Beyond The Shatter community on Facebook. And if you have a story worth telling — which you absolutely do — the Army of Warriors program at BeyondtheShatter.com will give it a home. Free, always.
— Lewis
- Lewis Bartelle
- Mar 21
Updated: May 2
Shining a Light on the Unseen 80%
Hey everyone, Lewis here.
I want to talk about the part of stroke recovery that almost everyone misses — including, for a long time, me.
When I survived my stroke — the ruptured brain aneurysm that came out of nowhere on what was supposed to be a regular Sunday morning — I was grateful for every single person who showed up. The doctors, the nurses, the therapists who helped me learn to move again. They were heroes, every one of them.
The visible, outward reality of what a stroke does to a person got addressed immediately. People could see it. People could rally around it.
But here is the truth I learned quickly: the stroke event was only the beginning. And most people — even the ones who love you most — can only ever see a fraction of the battle you are fighting every single day.
That is why I want to share what became my defining metaphor for this entire journey. The one I built the foundation of Beyond Shattered around. The one that finally helped me explain to people what recovery actually looks like from the inside.
The iceberg.
The Tip Everyone Sees
Picture a massive iceberg floating in the ocean. The part everyone sees — the dramatic jagged peak above the waterline — that is the stroke event itself. The diagnosis. The emergency room. The coma. The paralysis. The wheelchair. The intensive early rehab where you are clearly, visibly working hard and people can clearly, visibly cheer you on.
That was the tip of my iceberg. I was in an induced coma for six weeks. I woke up not knowing where I was, what had happened, or what my body was anymore. My first physical therapy memory is a woman moving my legs up and down in what I later found out was basic range of motion work. I eventually graduated to a pink gait belt and a walker with arm stilts, shuffling ten agonizing feet at a time like a wobbly astronaut.
That part — the visible part — got all the support. Every card, every prayer, every “you’ve got this” meant the world to me. And I needed all of it.
But what nobody tells you is that roughly 80% of the iceberg — the part that actually shapes your daily life, year after year after year — is completely hidden beneath the surface.
It is the part you cannot see from shore. The part that does not come with a dramatic diagnosis or a visible reason to ask for help. The part that when you try to explain it, sometimes gets met with a look that says: but you seem fine.
That 80% is what I want to name today. Because here is what I have learned — you cannot own what you have not named.
What Lives Below the Surface
Let me walk you through what that underwater mass actually looks like for me personally. Some are the same but we each have our own list. If you are a survivor reading this, I want you to feel seen. If you are a caregiver or loved one, I want you to understand what your person is truly carrying every single day.
Post-Stroke Fatigue
This is not tired. This is a bone-deep, brain-exhausting drain that hits without warning and has no simple fix. I can have what looks like a normal conversation with you and simultaneously feel like I just ran a marathon. The cognitive effort required for things that used to be completely automatic — following a fast conversation, making a simple decision, reading a paragraph without losing my place — is enormous. And because survivors get good at masking it, people do not see it. But it is there. Every single day.
Double Vision, Depth Perception and Balance
I have gone through more than ten pairs of glasses over twelve-plus years. Double vision is not a minor inconvenience — it affects depth perception in ways that turn an ordinary sidewalk into a calculation, make every line of text want to drift off the page, and transform something as simple as stepping over a bag on the floor into a genuine physical challenge. Because my head moves when I walk, my vision moves with it. The world is never completely still. Most people around me will never know that — because I have gotten very good at managing it quietly.
Dysarthria and the Invisible Communication Load
My words are there. My thoughts are fully formed and completely clear. But the stroke damaged the part of my nervous system that controls the muscles I use to speak — and that means every single conversation requires an extraordinary amount of unseen effort. I need the environment calm. I need a listener who will not interrupt. Because when someone jumps in before I have finished, I do not just lose my place — I have to rebuild the entire thought from scratch. There is a whole hidden layer of brain activity behind every sentence I speak, and it costs far more than most people could imagine. I talk funny, as I like to say. But there is nothing funny about how hard the brain is working behind every word.
Inner Frustration That Gets Mistaken for Anger
When I snap, that frustration is aimed at me — at this situation, at the gap between who I was and what I can do right now. It is not aimed at you. But you hear it and take it personally, and suddenly I am managing your hurt feelings on top of my own. I want you to know: that outburst is not a character flaw. It is a human being processing a level of daily loss that most people are never asked to endure. Give us a moment. We always come back.
Identity Loss and the Grief of the New Normal
Before my stroke I was a gearhead. A builder. A store manager ranked in the top 100 audio installers in the nation. I had a career I was proud of and a life I built brick by agonizing brick. After the stroke, all of those identifiers got scrambled. The grief of that — the quiet, daily mourning of the person you used to be — is real and valid and heavy. Nobody hands you a pamphlet about this one. But it is one of the most significant things survivors carry, and learning to process it honestly is some of the most important work on this entire road.
This list is not complete — not by a long shot. Cognitive fog, sleep disruption, medication side effects, the social isolation of feeling like you cannot fully explain yourself — these all live below the surface too. The unseen 80% looks different for every survivor, but the experience of carrying it largely alone is something almost all of us share. You are not imagining it. And you are not alone in it.
Why Naming It Is the Most Powerful Thing You Can Do
Here is the thing about an iceberg: the part below the surface does not become less real just because people cannot see it. It is still massive. It is still powerful. And it is still shaping everything about how you move through the water.
For a long time I let that 80% be a source of shame. Something I worked to hide, to minimize, to apologize for. I performed “fine” so well that the people closest to me did not know how to help — because they had no idea what they were actually looking at.
The day I started naming it out loud — the fatigue, the vision, the dysarthria, the grief — was the day recovery stopped feeling like something happening to me and started feeling like something I was actively navigating.
Naming it is not complaining. It is not weakness. It is not asking for pity.
Naming it is the first act of ownership.
It tells your brain, your support system, and the world: I see this clearly. I understand what I am dealing with. And I am choosing to move through it anyway.
I go deep on all of this in Beyond Shattered — the full breakdown of what the recovery landscape actually looks like and how to start rebuilding it piece by piece. If you are early in this journey and need a complete roadmap, that book was built for exactly this moment. You can grab your copy on Amazon.
The Iceberg Is Not Your Ceiling — It Is Your Foundation
I want to close with this, and I mean it completely.
That 80% below the surface — the part nobody sees, the part that makes every single day a quiet act of endurance — it is not your limitation. It is your foundation.
Every survivor who is managing the unseen 80% while still getting out of bed, still showing up to therapy, still trying to speak clearly and walk straight and live a meaningful life — is operating at a level of resilience that most people will never be required to find. God put something in you that is tougher than what tried to take you out. I have seen it in myself over thirteen-plus years, and I see it in the survivors I sit with through the Army of Warriors program every single day.
You have been forged by something that would have broken a lot of people. The fatigue, the frustration, the invisible symptoms — they did not stop you. They shaped you into someone who knows exactly how strong they are because they had to find out the hard way. And that knowledge? Nobody can take it from you.
The goal was never to get back to who you were before the stroke.
The goal is to discover who you are capable of becoming because of everything that came after.
And I promise you — that person is worth knowing.
If you want to share your story and let other survivors see that it is possible — come join the Army of Warriors at BeyondtheShatter.com. It is completely free, and your story deserves to be heard. And if you just need a place where people truly get it, come find us in the Beyond The Shatter community on Facebook. You should not be carrying this alone.
Keep going. Name what is beneath the surface. Own your whole iceberg — all of it.
— Lewis
If this resonated with you, Beyond Shattered — available on Amazon — is the complete guide to rebuilding your life piece by piece. Every chapter was written for the survivor who had no roadmap. Come get yours.
