How To Set And Complete Goals

Behaviorists have long strategized different approaches to set and complete goals. Unfortunately, it’s usually not as easy as thinking, “I want my life to be this way, so I’m going to just do it.” That’s the equivalent of “just say no to drugs.” If things were that easy, most people would be able to accomplish what they set out too. In order to best understand how to complete goals, we’re going to separate goals into four types of categories.

The first types of goals are time oriented and include long and short term time frames. It’s good to name your long term goal, such as saving 10k a year. However, without breaking down this larger goal into clear and measurable fragments, it can be difficult to accomplish. That’s why we’d recommend you create subcategories, such as, spending x amount of per month, dividing what your monthly expenses are into categories like food, gas and rent. To complete these goals, you should either use an app or manually track your spending.

Secondly, we should think of goals in terms of qualitative and quantitative. A quantitative goal is evaluated using statistics or numbers. On the other hand, a qualitative goal is a bit more difficult to measure. For example, I want to create a website and increase my users by 50% and make sure they are happy with the layout of the overall website. The increase of 50% is our quantitative goal and their happiness with the website layout is qualitative.

Moreover, there’s process and outcome oriented goals. A process oriented goal will focus on completing steps to achieve your desired result, whereas an outcome-oriented goal focuses solely on achieving the desired results. Lastly, there’s performance based goals. These revolve around shorter term objectives for each task. We’ll elaborate more on this in the next section.

Recovery Goals

Knowing how different types of goals work is great, but being able to apply them to your recovery is incredible! As a quick side note, if you’re struggling to maintain sobriety and develop a good daily routine, I would highly recommend looking into a recovery coach or sober companion. A strong peer support system can be a game changer in your early recovery!

Some of the best strategies I learned for sustaining my sobriety included applying goal oriented approaches to recovery. Here are some tips and tricks I learned along the way that you might consider:

Rather than declare I want to maintain sobriety for the rest of my life, consider breaking it down to 1-3 month goals. There’s a reason the catchphrase of recovery is “one day at a time.” This is because viewing sobriety in a 24 hour time frame can help reframe the difficulty of your task.
If you’re struggling with attending meetings, consider the goal of one meeting per week. A process oriented approach to this would be asking one or two people at the meeting to help hold you accountable.
If you want to incorporate more activities to support your recovery, create subcategories like hiking, biking, weight lifting. From here, quantify a realistic amount of time you want to do these activities every month. I would encourage you to break it down further and write out your weekly schedule. It should include these activities and make sure they total the amount of time you want to dedicate every month.

These are just a handful of suggestions on how you can utilize a goal oriented approach to changing your recovery. Our team of talented direct care professionals can help you or your loved one set and achieve your goals. Contact us today to learn more about our approach and how we can help.