Setting Realistic Goals During Addiction Recovery
If you’re determined to conquer recovery, it’s time to sit down and come up with your goals. Regardless of where you are in your recovery, or if you have yet to start, setting realistic goals is an important step in defining who you want to become and where you want to see yourself over the next year.
Goal setting comes from personal aspirations, and each individual will have their own idea of what they want to achieve in life.
However, poor goal setting can hinder individual growth and can cause set-backs during the recovery process. It’s important that your milestones are attainable and that you are not setting yourself up for failure. To help in this process, we developed five key points to remember when creating your plan for 2016.
Be Specific
Setting specific goals helps you keep your goals within a realistic realm. This means that, for every goal, there is a certain action item that must be accomplished and can be clearly measured when reviewing your plan. Let’s use one of the most common goals during recovery as an example: employment. If you set a goal for yourself that states,
Step-By-Step
Once you’ve set your specific goals, it’s time to break them down. Creating a step-by-step process for your goals allows you to visualize the roadmap to success and also check off your mini-wins.
Even if you have extremely specific goals, you still need to create mini-goals within a larger objective to keep you on track and feeling great. Let’s break down our example main goal, “Get hired at a job with at least 30 hours per week at $12 per hour.” Possible steps to obtaining this goal could be as follows:
Be Resourceful
Always remember that you are not alone during your journey. There is a plethora of resources available to you that help establish recovery goals and maintain those goals along the way. Online sources, support groups, counselors, and more are all at your disposal to aid in whatever help you need.
Sharing your goals also helps make sure you are accountable to your journey. As you set goals, share them with a friend, a support group member, a sponsor or a family member and ask them to hold you accountable during each small step.
It’s important that this person routinely checks in and encourages you to complete your milestones on-time, but it’s even more important that they congratulate you when you have your mini-wins as well.
Setbacks Are Normal
Life happens, and some circumstances are out of your control. There might be an outlying factor that does not allow you to complete your goals on-time or in the way you envisioned.
As long as you took all the steps necessary that were in your control, remember that you did everything you could and don’t get discouraged by the change. Instead, create a new goal that is attainable and start pursuing the steps necessary to accomplish that milestone.
During recovery, setting and accomplishing goals is about the process and not the end result. Enjoy the process and the unknowns that come with it, and keep in mind that boredom, or the inability to adapt, can be dangerous during recovery. Easy does it! Always keep persevering.
Set Your Sights on Self-Regulation
In the end, it’s about healthy habits. By setting goals and mini-milestones for the year, you are creating a roadmap to developing healthy habits and processes. Learning how to be flexible and adapt in a healthy way creates a great foundation moving forward when faced with important life decisions.
Sobriety is not obtained overnight, and the ability to self-regulate comes with practice, experience and help from others. Each setback along the way is a chance to develop these self-regulation abilities, and each win gives you the chance to celebrate in a healthy manner.
When setting goals, keep in mind the process you will take to achieve that goal and how it affects your daily habits, and this will help you set realistic milestones that set you up for success during your recovery. Good luck on your journey through 2016!
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