Goals: How they help ease Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety

Having and setting goals can help people with depression or anxiety because having them provides structure, purpose and something to work toward.  The difficulty level of the goal depends on what is needed at any given time in life.  Sometimes we are in weakened places and need simple goals just to keep up daily functioning.  Other times we need something more challenge so as to give us something to strive for.  But regardless of the difficulty level, it's important that the goals we set for ourselves be realistic and personally meaningful.

When individuals are depressed, goals provide a way to gradually work to come out of a slump.  Small goals such as just taking a shower, or going for one walk a day, can help to give a little bit of outline to a day that otherwise seems meaningless.  Reaching these small goals helps to build on a sense of accomplishment that encourages the desire to continue those set goals and even strive for new ones.

Anxiety is also a motivator for setting goals and starting small in this arena is also helpful to anyone who suffers from panic attacks, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, or any other ways that anxiety may manifest itself in your life.  Setting goals to start off very small, with goals that are easily reachable is key for both depression and anxiety.  Start with things so simple that you know you can complete them.

Outside of depression and anxiety (for those who do not suffer from these), goal setting is a great help in facing existential hurdles in life such as finding meaning and purpose, warding off loneliness and boredom, finding new ways to spend one's time after divorce, addiction, abuse, and even trauma.

When setting goals for yourself keep some things in mind:  First, be realistic.  If you've never mountain climbed before, then setting a goal to summit Mt Everest might be a reach.  But if you'd like to take a beginner's class on climbing, then being realistic about your ability, strength, desire, athleticism can help you determine if the goal is indeed realistic and within your reach.  If unsure, such a goal could begin with smaller goals such as setting appointments to speak with a climbing teacher, or go observe climbers doing the kind of climbing you may like.

Second, be specific about your goals.  A vague goal such as "be more active" might leave you without direction.  But a specific goal stating that you want to walk a mile a day, or look for a softball team to join, or maybe you've been thinking about setting up an exercise room in your home and could set preliminary goals to begin studying what that would require.  If your goal is to "eat better", that might be too unclear and could hide what the real desired goal could be.  So narrowing it down to a very specific goal of what "eating better" will mean.  This can help you reach specific goals and higher levels of success.

Third, make sure the goal is your own, not something others have told you to go after.  It's important that your goals be your own and are meaningful to you personally.  It's also important to resist the urge to try to make the striving and accomplishment too perfectionistic.  So be ready to leave wiggle room for altering the goal, changing your mind about how it will proceed, and finding ways to push through whatever stands in the way.

Goal setting helps to break the cycle of withdraw and inactivity and also helps to prevent avoidance behaviors.  According to the American Psychological Association, going after life goals can fend of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks.  You can find their 2019 article about that here 

Goals don't have to be major or expensive.  They can be as simple as "eating more vegetables" or as complex as "traveling to New Zealand".  If you are suffering from depression, anxiety, boredom or what feels like a meaningless life, consider setting at least one goal.  Start with something very simple.  Exploring a new park or lake, reading a book you heard about, learning yoga, going fishing, etc.  As long as it matters to you, has meaning to your personally, and is realistic and achievable, it's a goal you can aim for.

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams"     ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Thanks to Melissamade for the great image, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Stress Free Realistic Goals

It's a new year and maybe you made all sorts of resolutions in hopes of bettering your life.  It's never a bad idea to have good intentions for the future, especially if they mean growth and self-improvement.  Exercise, weight loss and improving one's diet are all at the top of the list each year for most people. In fact, the month with the highest number of new gym memberships is January. 

But statistics also reveal that only 25% of people who make these resolutions are still actually committed to the task after just one month, and January is also the month with the highest number of gym membership cancellations.  So yes, you heard that right.  It all happens that fast.  We see the new year coming, and the gyms see it too.  So they offer lots and lots of deals in December while everyone is buying gifts and wanting to set new goals.

That means at the writing of this blog entry in late January, 2025, you and many others like you are already losing your mojo and maybe even wanting your membership refunded.  You could be losing your drive for many other kinds of goals you set for yourself at the start of the new year.  

So what happens that causes many of us to get that inspirational drive to see the changes we want to make, set the goals and put things in place to reach them, but then lose whatever that energy was that set a fire under us to being with?

If you needed to climb a tall staircase and while standing at the bottom you focused only on that top step, you might lose your desire to begin the climb in the first place.  But if you divided the staircase into parts and set 4 different goals, the task might seem a little simpler if you only looked up that staircase 4 steps at a time.  Goal one is to reach step four, goal two is to reach step eight, goal three is to reach step twelve and the final goal is to reach the last step at the top.

Our new resolutions and goals can be seen this way in that if all we see is the final weight loss goal, or the final change we want to see (overnight) in our diet plan, or the newly changed exercise plan we want our body to be doing in the next 24 hours, then of course we can become discouraged fast as we discover, change doesn't come that fast.  Change takes time and any situation we are in today took a long time to reach.  So it will take time to change as well.

If you are reaching the end of January and already feeling discouraged about your new goals, rather than label the whole task as a failure, consider the idea of regrouping and restarting with a new approach.  Break the task down into smaller sections with each section being its own goal.  Rather than an entire diet change (overnight), consider adding or subtracting one thing you'd like to try to change in your diet first.  Such as cutting out just 500 calories a day, or reducing the amount of sugar you take in, or cutting down on just one cup of coffee a day, and so on.  Yes, the goal is to eventually stop the coffee completely, or cut out the sugars entirely, or get the caloric intake down much further than 500 calories a day, but the smaller goal may be more reachable.  Reach for step 4 on the staircase first, and leave the top step for later.

If your goal is to exercise more, regroup and restart by setting realistic goals such as just trying to go for a 15 min walk each day sometime before bed, rather than "I'm going to start running five miles a day and it must be first thing in the morning", or "I must workout for an hour a day starting now", even though you don't really have an extra hour a day to give.  Let the 15 min walk be your equivalent of just aiming for the fourth step on the staircase.  Letting the higher goals be later steps.

Thinking of your new goals as themes instead of resolutions can also ease the pressure to perform and allow the new goals to have aim but not demand.  Reachable goals bring success, not failure.  They are also a lot less stressful and your drive tends to be higher for things you know you can successfully do.

If you feel more discouraged than driven toward your goals as 2025 moves forward, consider regrouping and restarting with reachable and realistic goals.  Muscle is built over time and so is weight loss.  New habits are developed slowly with repetition, not by the flip of a switch.  Take it easy and try again.  Don't give up!

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity"     ~Amelia Earhart

Thanks to ray explores for the great photo, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Reducing Stress: Seeing your New Year Resolutions through to the End

It's a new year and fresh starts are always a clean slate, allowing a way to put some things behind you and begin again. 

According to a new survey from Forbes Health, the top resolutions for 2024 are to improve fitness, finances and mental health.  So it's clear that people really want to do well, take care of themselves, stay out of debt and feel better emotionally and psychologically.  But where do we begin?

Reaching these kinds of goals takes a lot of determination and consistency in behavior and schedule.  So finding ways to approach the problems of inconsistency and broken schedules is a great place to begin.  In other words, how to stay on track with your new goals and themes for the year.

Here is a simple method to consider:  First, limit the plan to as few items as possible.  Second, keep the goal and expectation within reach (even a little low if necessary).  Third, place expectations and consistency at an equal level.  So the summary of the plan is:  A) few items, B) expectations within reach, and C) keeping expectations and consistency equal.

So here is an example:  Let's say you want to lose 10 pounds.  The first step is to keep that simple, not decide it also includes joining a gym, running 5 miles a day to reach it, altering your entire diet, and increasing the number of times you walk the dog a day to increase steps all to reach the goal of losing 10 pounds.  Instead, the simple goal is just one goal, and that is to drop 10 pounds.  

Next, you want to set the expectations for your 10 pound weight loss within reasonable reach.  Calculating a reasonable number of pounds to drop per week, how to do that based on caloric intake and caloric burning, and determine a reasonable amount of activities or diet restrictions that can actually be reached on a daily and weekly basis.  The key wording her is "reasonable expectations" of yourself and the diet, not unreasonable or even impossible.

Finally, you would determine what you can reasonably do on a consistent basis to reach these tasks and goal.  Such as how far you can reasonably run if not 5 miles a day, and how many sit up or miles walked can your reasonably or actually fit in to your busy schedule without overloading yourself and starting to fail at the  task?

Last year I wrote about setting "themes" for your New Year instead of "resolutions" or "goals".  With that in mind, set these new target activities in your life as themes to focus on and not some end-all place to reach.  Especially when it comes to tasks like dieting, where it's the lifestyle that is to change on a regualr basis and not just a number that is to be reached.

If your goal is to spend less money.  Try outlining that goal with this three-part plan.  One, keep it simple.  Don't try to stop your daily latte', plus cut your grocery bill in half, plus cut out your Amazon shopping, and have your cable disconnected all at once.  Start with something small that helps you learn to discontinue one thing consistently.  If that item is within a reasonable level of expectation and you know you can do it, then try the easier task first.  If, say, you just focus on cutting out the daily latte' and have a pretty good idea that that first goal is reachable, and that you can easily reach that expectation of yourself, then let that be enough at first.  Being able to show yourself you can cut that item out over time leads to an overall feeling of success, which sets you up to try a second item on your financial goals list.

Whatever changes you have decided to tackle for the New Year, make sure they are simple, reachable, and you feel confident you can stay steadily after them until you reach success.

You can see my previous blog entry about ways to stick to your New Years resolution here.

"Motivation is what gets your started, habit is what keeps you going."    ~Jillian Michaels

Thanks to Nan Fry for her great image, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/