I Went from Stuck to UNSTOPPABLE with Goal Setting and CBT!

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Creating the Life youe Want, One Day at a Time. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelisse Snipes. The first thing you need to do in order to create the life you want is define it. What values are important to you? Because our values guide our actions. So what values are important? Is compassion important? Is creativity important? What people, things and experiences are important to you? And what you're going to do is you're going to create kind of a mind map, if you will, of what your rich and meaningful life looks like. So for each person, thing or experience that's important to you, print out a picture of it, ideally. Or if you don't want to, write what it is on a piece of paper. On the back of that piece of paper, write why that thing is important to you and what you will do in general in order to nurture or improve it. So, for example, my relationship with my children, I would have their picture on the front, and on the back I'd write why it's important to me, and then I would identify three things that I'm going to do in order to nurture my relationship with my daughter. And then for my son, I would do the same thing on another sheet that you're going to attach to it. Identify any potential obstacles and strategies to overcome those obstacles. So for my daughter, for example, she's in college. Some semesters are way more intense for her than other semesters, so she may not have as much time some semesters to do the things that we normally do together. So I need to figure out, what can I do when she's short on time or if my work gets really busy? What can I do when I'm short on time? So I'm still nurturing that relationship. I'm not just saying, oh, well, you know, I'll catch up with it later. I always need to recognize how can I make sure to give energy to that relationship the next thing you're going to do, because it can seem overwhelming when you start looking at all those people and things that are important in your rich and meaningful life and all the places that you want to go. Well, that's wonderful, but it's important to take stock of what things about your life are already good. What things do you have going now? Maybe your health is okay and you want to improve it, but it's good right now. You know, that's something to take stock of and recognize. All right, I'm not starting from 50 yards back. You know, my health is good. My energy is Good. It could be better. But you know, things, things are good. Finances, mood, job, education, opportunities that are available to you, friendships, even your pets. Just taking stock of what are the good things and what are the things that are available to you for things that are not going so well because we don't want to be toxically optimistic for things that are not going so well. What can you do to improve the situation? And you know, there are a variety of things that you may need to do. Sometimes you can't change it, but you can change how you react to it. So, for example, when my mother had cancer, I couldn't change that, but I could change how I reacted. Instead of being angry about it or depressed about it and or withdrawing because I didn't want to see it, I figured if I could, if I didn't see it, then it wasn't existing. I faced it head on and I increased how frequently I called her and made the most of the time that we had together. Now, yes, I couldn't change the bad thing, but I could change my reaction to it. Then identify what other resources are available to help you achieve the life you want. Maybe you want to get healthier. Well, a good, reliable physician may be helpful, or dietitian may be helpful with that. If you want to travel or retire early, maybe a financial counselor would be helpful for achieving that. If you have a new gym in your area, that would be a resource. If you want to start exercising or meet people who are into fitness, healthy meal delivery services can help you save time as well as delivery what you need in order to learn how to start eating more healthfully. So there's a lot of resources out there that you can draw on to help guide you and encourage you in your change process. Okay, so you've defined your rich and meaningful life. These are your ultimate goals. How much time are you willing to devote to this each day? Remember that setting too many goals or goals that are too big for the time you have is a recipe for disaster. So it's important to say to yourself, all right, what can I legitimately do? Maybe you have 15 friends that you want to nurture the relationship with. Well, you can't possibly call and Talk to all 15 of them on the phone every week. So how are you going to connect with them? And, you know, maybe it's just sending them a short email or instant message or something. So think about, you know, when you're starting to make these goals. Whatever you're going to do, make sure that it fits within your time constraints. You also Want to chunk your goals? Getting in shape or getting healthy, that's huge. That can take a long time. So what you want to do is identify small consistent changes because those have a better chance of success. And, and you're going to build on those. You can call them mini goals or even micro goals, but for every small change you make, it gets you a little bit closer to your ultimate goal. If you make a small change every day for a year, then you're 364, 365% closer to your, to your goal. At the end of the year, you know you've, which you know means you've well achieved it. So what you're going to do in general is learn about the issue if you want to improve your relationships. Well, first you've got to know what healthy relationships look like. You know, not just this theory of I want to have good relationships. Well, what does that look like? What is a healthy relationship? Identify the areas you might need to address in your relationships. So then you're going to step back and look and go, okay, well these are all the characteristics of healthy relationships. I do well there, there, there and there. I might need to work on that and that over there. Okay, great. So you know what you need to do now? Learn about those areas. So maybe you need to work on assertive communication and maintaining boundaries. Okay, fine. So those are the things you need to learn about. How do I do that? And you know, what's the process? Make a plan with specific, measurable, achievable, rewarding and time limited goals. Time limited is so important. If you set these huge goals that are, you know, you can't accomplish for three months or six months, it's hard to stay motivated, set daily and weekly goals for yourself. So let's apply this. Maybe you're going to improve your relationships. Like I said, that's kind of amorphous. So first you want to learn about the characteristics of healthy relationships by reading, watching or consulting books or videos or whatever. And you're going to do that maybe the first two weeks, maybe you say that's all I need is two weeks to do some research. Okay, cool. Then you're going to review your relationships to identify the deficiencies. Now that you know what healthy relationships are are, review your relationships to identify those deficiencies. And then you're going to learn about the skills needed to address those deficiencies again by reading self help books or watching self help videos or consulting with a counselor or whomever. So mindful self awareness could be one of those skills. Enhancing your Self esteem, assertive communication, setting and maintaining boundaries, synergizing with people who have other temperaments, and nurturing relationships with the people that are important in our life are all essential skills in healthy relationships. So you may have this list here. Those are your sub goals. Now what you're going to do is you're going to break those sub goals down. So maybe the first thing that you need to learn about is mindful self awareness. You need to learn how to be more present and aware of your thoughts, wants and needs. Your impact on others and their impact on you in the moment. You need to be more aware of that and less you know, either in your head or all over the place. So the first thing you're going to do is learn about what is mindful self awareness. Give yourself a week to do the research to learn about that topic. What will I do to increase it? Well, once you've learned about it, you've probably figured out some ways that you might be able to increase it. So you will choose two or three of those and you will set your goals. How often will I do this? And in this case we'll say twice a day, in the morning and in the evening. How will I know when I've mastered it? And everybody's going to be a little different on this one. But you could say something like, I will notice that in my interactions with others, I'm more aware in the present moment of my impact on them and their impact on me. You do the same thing for each one of the other sub goals, answering the questions, what is it? Which generally means you're going to have a week or so of learning about something. What will I do to increase it? So from your learning you're going to identify two or three behaviors that you're going to do in order to start moving towards that goal. And you're going to identify how often you're going to do it. And you're going to reflect on this every day and you're going to identify, how will I know when I've mastered it? How will I know when I have better self esteem? How will I know when I am able to effectively communicate assertively, etc. And then enhance your motivation for whatever goal you're getting ready to tackle. And you're only going to tackle one of those at a time. So you're not going to do all of these sub goals at once. You're going to start out with mindful self awareness. For example, you're going to start getting to the point where you feel like you've mastered that and then begin enhancing your self esteem. I usually say set aside about a month every time you start a new goal where you're focusing on that goal before you start adding another one. So enhance your motivation. Physical how will doing this help you feel better physically? So if I improve my relationships, then I may be holding on to less anger and anxiety and fear of abandonment and all this other stuff, which means I can relax more easily. My HPA axis won't be so hyperactivated because I won't be in fight or flight mode a lot, which means I'll be able to sleep better and my immune system is going to be enhanced and all kinds of good stuff. Affectively, if my relationships are going better, I'm going to be in a better mood. I know this Cognitively it makes sense that if I improve my relationships, I'll be able to let go of some of my unpleasant emotions and I will also feel more loved, safer and more content in my relationships. Environmentally, what can I add to my environment to remind me to do it? So if I'm working on enhancing my relationships and one of the things I need to start doing is more frequently connecting with the people who are important to me, then I may send myself push notifications or I may put it on my Outlook calendar so I get notified for mindfulness. Definitely push notifications because that's something I know I want to do every morning and every evening. So what can I put in my environment to remind me to do something that's just not second nature yet relationally, who is supportive of my change? A lot of these things. It's helpful to have a study buddy if you will, somebody to practice the skill skills with, somebody to bounce things off of. So who's supportive of your change and how might you how might doing this improve your relationships? Obviously, if you're working on improving your relationships, then that by virtue of itself is going to improve your relationships. But if you're doing something different like improving your health, how can that improve your relationships? Well, if you improve your health, then you are sick less often and have more energy so you have more freed up time and availability to nurture your relationships. You can go do stuff more often or you have energy and desire to do it. It's important when you're making a change to be mindful. So each morning reflect on what things are going well. Recognize that things, again, things aren't perfect, but what things are going well. Of the things that aren't going well, what can you do to address it? So maybe you wake up in the morning and you don't like rain, but it's raining outside. All right, well, can't make it stop raining. So how can you cope with that? How can you address, change your reaction to that particular situation? And sometimes it may take a little bit of, you know, mental gymnastics, and it could ultimately result in saying to yourself, well, you know what? The rain won't last forever. But figuring out how to cope with the things that aren't going well is important. You want to reflect on the progress that you've made toward your goal. You know, how well are you doing on this? Are you keeping up with it? Changes happen gradually, so don't expect to be a master of mindfulness in a week. But how are you making progress? Is it becoming second nature? Does it seem like it's helping? Envision yourself successfully achieving your goal for that day. If your goal is to go to the gym or to communicate assertively with one person or to whatever it is you're going to do, envision yourself doing it. Maybe it's to reach out to three of your friends in email or instant messaging. You know, just kind of see yourself doing that. You're priming your brain. If you're practicing a new skill, rehearse it three times. For example, maybe you are practicing the skill of being assertive and saying no or asking for help. Look in the mirror. If you need to practice doing it three times each evening, reflect on your day. How effective were you at using your new skill or your new behavior? You're not going to be perfect, so you want to look. You want to strive for progress, not perfection. How effective were you at using it if you didn't do it at all? You want to look at why, if you did it some. You want to look at what was the difference between when you did do it and when you didn't. So how effective? What challenges occurred? What things happened that made it harder or stopped you from using your new behavior, and how did you handle them? So maybe it was harder to be assertive because one of your co workers was being aggressive verbally, so that was a challenge. How did you handle it? If you were assertive in response to that person's aggressiveness, then, you know, pat yourself on the back and figure out how you handled that. If you responded aggressively to that person, okay, you want to step back and say, what could I do differently next time? Knowing that person will probably behave aggressively. Again, how could I handle it differently? Review your motivations for making whatever change it is, and is there anything you can do to help you be more motivated. If so, what is it? And remember that change takes place incrementally. So one day at a time. Each day brings its own unique challenges and curveballs. Best laid plans, as they say. So don't get too tied up. And this comes from somebody who is extremely structured. And I have difficulty with being flexible. But try not to get too tied up in a plan that you have for a particular day. Recognize that you're going to do the best you can with the tools you have at that time. Remember that change takes a lot of energy and time. So if you start feeling exhausted, recognize that, step back and figure out what can I cut back on? What can I minimize? How can I not get to the point where I'm feeling completely burned out? Strive for progress, not perfection. Being compassionate with yourself. When you make a mistake, recognize it. Don't beat yourself up for it. Recognize that you reverted to an old behavior and figure out why and what you need to do to get back on track. Recognize the reciprocal impact of each change on every other area of your life. So for example, you know, I already talked about this a little bit. If you improve your self esteem, then it's probably going to hopefully have positive impacts on your relationships. And because you feel more confident in yourself and you can communicate to others how you feel like you deserve to be treated. So it can have a positive effect on your relationships, it can have a positive effect on you physically. Because people who have higher self esteem tend to feel less anxious about a lot of things. They tend to feel more confident, so their stress levels tend to go down affectively. People with more self esteem tend to have less issues, fewer problems with anxiety and depression. And cognitively, let's just add that one in there. When people are less stressed, less anxious, better able to relax, then they are able to better think clearly and can often be more creative. So something as seemingly unrelated to a lot of those things as self esteem can have those multiple impacts on a person's life.