What is a goal?
"A plan to achieve a particular activity or function"
Why do I need to set goals?
If you went through your life without setting yourself little goals, nothing would ever change each day would become the same, which wouldn't be very good for your mental health or physical. Life would become very boring,
There are a number of reasons why setting goals are important, these are as follows:
- Have Something to Achieve
- Gives you a Purpose
- Makes you more Focused
- Motivation
- Increases Confidence
- Having a Sense of Accomplishment when Achieved
- Takes away excuses for not doing things
When it comes to setting goals it is important to choose ones that have value for you, there is no point trying to do something that is of no benefit to you and only doing it to please others, otherwise you wont have the motivation to achieve it and are more likely to give up.
Too many people set goals that are
"not achievable" for them, they are too ambitious from the start, setting themselves up to fail. This can leave you feeling hopeless and not wanting to try again. If you set yourself small goals that you
can achieve, you are going to feel much better about yourself and more motivated to keep it up.
You are probably setting yourself small goals daily without even realising e.g. like getting out of bed rather than staying there all day. This shows that goals don't have to be complex as long as they mean something to you!
My physiotherapist asked me recently
what are your goals? I replied to get stronger and fitter, she wanted me to be more specific as this is the long term goal, how am I going to achieve this! We looked at it together and decided a
short term goal could be, to sit unsupported for 1 min at my computer. If I manage this then we can increase the time, or move onto another small goal. This is realistic and
achievable.
Goals are either short term or long term
Short term - Ways of breaking down a long-term goal into smaller attainable and manageable chunks
Long term - Something you want to achieve in the future, whether it's a new skill, hobby or activity that you used to do before you became ill and can no longer do it. Some examples of these might be self care, dressing independently, starting a computer course or mindfulness. In order to
Achieve one of these
goals, you would need to break them down into smaller goals first that you could manage in a shorter time frame.
Using
SMART is a useful way of setting
Achievable Goals.
