Setting and Achieving Goals: A Guide from Isaac Peterson

We’ve got some months of 2018 behind us now. How’s it been going for you so far?

Did you make New Year’s resolutions for yourself? Did they work out for you? Are you still working on the improvements you set for yourself? I assume you resolved to make yourself better in some way, since it makes no sense to resolve to make yourself worse or more negative. We hear about people on their deathbeds expressing regrets about things they should have done in their lives, but we don’t really hear of them saying things like, I really should have tried harder to be more of a selfish jerk.

The good news is that we don’t need to make resolutions at a particular time; we can resolve to change any and every day.

Let’s not call those resolves to change, resolutions; let’s call the process goal-setting, since that is the reason for making resolutions, to set new goals for ourselves. And if you have a traumatic brain injury (TBI), you almost certainly have some goals.

I know I sure have, and overall I’ve seen some success; but I still have a long way to go to make a complete recovery.

There are a lot of good websites out there loaded with good insights about setting goals–but I’m not going to rehash what they say since you can read them on your own without me.

 But I will tell you some things I’ve learned about setting goals that seem to work great for me.

First, I find positive mental imagery to be extremely useful–in fact, I find it crucial and necessary.

First off, you have to set specific goals. Let’s use losing weight as an example of a goal. To begin with, don’t expect great results just by saying, I’m going to lose weight. How much weight do you intend to lose? By what date? What do you intend to do to lose the weight in that time frame? I find it helpful to make mental pictures of what it will look like when I’ve met my goal, and to imagine how great I will feel when I meet it.

But that first requires that I have a good idea of what I will need to do to get there, to break it down into a series of attainable goals that, added up, will help get me to my goal.

Using weight loss as the example, I don’t advocate just deciding you will lose a specific number of pounds and leaving it at that. Instead of just deciding to lose 30 pounds, how about deciding to lose five pounds a month (or however many you think is realistic) until you hit the 30 pound goal?

Then you have to visualize how you’re going to do it: Exercise? Diet? A combination of the two? Some other method? However you decide to do it, visualize yourself doing it. Whatever goal you set, stick to it and let your mind take over–whatever you tell your mind you want to see, it will make sure it happens. It will give you the drive to follow through. In this case, see yourself taking the steps you decided on, standing on a scale in 30 days, and seeing the scale showing you lost five pounds.

Lather, rinse and repeat as necessary as they say. If you’re doing it right, you should see yourself hitting your 30 pound goal in six months or so.

And think how good you will feel the first time you lose five pounds according to your plan. I guarantee you will feel all psyched up and want to keep it going. That’s just the first step. What I believe in is setting yourself up to experience a series of small victories on the way to your goal. You will want to keep winning, and before long, you will expect to keep winning, and you will rack up a series of small victories until you get where you want to be. Just make sure to keep it realistic and not expect it to happen overnight.