Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution, only to find yourself feeling unmotivated to complete or stick to it in the New Year? While setting goals can facilitate feelings of excitement and motivation, many people find that achieving goals is increasingly difficult. At The Guest House, we know the repetition of self-defeating behaviors through maladaptive coping strategies makes achieving goals difficult. Therefore, we are committed to helping you close the gap between setting and achieving mental health goals.
Setting and Achieving Goals
According to an article from the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, goals are a mental representation of your desires for your life. On the other hand, goal setting is the process of identifying specific goals and determining how to achieve those desired goals.
Moreover, as noted in Health Psychology Open, confidence and self-efficacy play important roles in your ability to set and achieve goals. When you work in collaboration with your therapist to choose goals, it increases goal achievement and better recovery outcomes. Furthermore, as the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine notes, understanding the characteristics of different types of goals can impact goal setting and achievement.
Different Types of Goals
Listed below are some different goal characteristics for setting and achieving goals in recovery:
- Approach: Moving toward desired outcomes
- Positive framing
- Increased positive emotions and thoughts
- Improved self-evaluation
- Greater mental wellness
- Avoidance: Moving away from undesired outcomes
- Negative framing
- Fewer positive thoughts
- Increased negative emotions
- Performance: Judging and evaluating abilities
- Perceive lack of achievement as a failure of abilities
- Mastery: Increasing existing abilities and skillset
- Learning goals
- Learn new skills
- Perceive failure as a natural part of learning
- Problem-solving
- Active engagement
- Increased confidence
In addition to goal characteristics, your ability to engage and achieve goals is influenced by goal commitment, motivation, confidence, and planning.
Action and Coping Plans
The American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine notes that an action plan focuses on the where, when, and how of applying goals. Building an action plan can help you plan specific actions that lead to overarching goal achievement, whereas a coping plan focuses on anticipating barriers and challenges to the action plan.
Moreover, coping plans gives you tools to build plans to overcome those barriers and continue working towards your goals. Undeniably so, there will always be challenges and barriers that arise in achieving goals. However, building a healthy coping plan that makes sense for you diminishes distraction and setbacks to support achieving your goals and recovery.
Achieving Goals at the Guest House
At The Guest House, we know your experiences are unique to you. Therefore, we believe in the importance of working in collaboration with you to tailor a treatment plan for long-term management that makes sense for you. With an extensive range of treatment programs, therapeutic modalities, and holistic approaches, we can help you develop the tools you need to set and achieve goals for long-term healing beyond your time with us.
Self-defeating behaviors can make it difficult to set and achieve goals in recovery. However, developing confidence and building self-efficacy can increase goal achievement to support long-term recovery. Therefore, learning how to build different types of goals that influence your commitment, motivation, and confidence can also improve consistent goal achievement. Moreover, creating a coping plan in conjunction with your action plan can help you overcome the challenges and barriers that often derail your goals. Here at The Guest House, we believe in building personalized treatment plans that will give you the tools for long-term recovery. Call us at (855) 483-7800 today.