With the end of 2020 approaching, you might be thinking about resolutions you want to make for the new year. Instead of making resolutions, consider focusing on creating goals that involve intention setting, planning and taking realistic action. Goals are more specific efforts to ensure that we can make positive changes for ourselves for the new year and beyond. While many people may automatically think about goals they can make focused on their careers or their finances, it also is good to make mental health goals. These kind of goals have the potential to make a significant impact on all areas of our lives.
The Importance of Goal Setting
There are many benefits we can gain from goal setting. People who set goals tend to have higher self-motivation, self-esteem, independence and confidence. Having goals is important because it gives us a sense of purpose and something to strive for. Good goals also involve our values and ensure that we are challenging ourselves to uphold them. When it comes to our mental health, it is especially important to set goals for ourselves in this area. By striving to improve our mental wellbeing, we come closer and closer to self-fulfillment (which can allow us to flourish in our relationships, school, careers, and hobbies). We encourage everyone to set specific mental health goals for themselves for the new year.
Examples of Mental Health Goals
Your goals should be unique to you and your current needs. However, here are some examples of good mental health goals that you can set for 2021:
How to Set Mental Health Goals
Identify Your “Why”
Before beginning to follow through with your goals, consider the “why” or the real reason behind them. We should avoid making goals based on what someone else is telling us or what society is telling us. Instead, our goals should be personal. What works for others may not work for you and vice versa. They should be rooted in our values and what we truly want for ourselves, especially when it comes to our own mental health.
Make SMART-ER Goals
You may already be familiar with SMART goals. These goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound. It’s a tried and true formula for creating successful goals. There are two other components that we might also consider when setting our goals, making them SMART-ER. In addition to the other criteria, these goals are also evaluative and ethical, as well as rewarding. With the E and R addition, our goals should align with our personal values and the end result of them should bring us a feeling of accomplishment or a reward. Setting SMART-ER mental health goals will allow us to feel motivated and fulfilled by our intentions for improving our wellbeing.
Acknowledge That It Will Take Time
It’s important to recognize that it takes time to accomplish our goals. They aren’t supposed to be easy. We can expect ourselves to slip up or begin to doubt ourselves, and that’s normal. If things really aren’t working, we may have to pause and readjust our goals all together, but that’s perfectly okay. What matters is that we acknowledge our goals are a journey, while still holding ourselves accountable to attend to them. It’s also important to remember to take care of our mental health throughout the process, in whatever way works for us.
Set a Range of Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Sometimes big goals can easily become overwhelming. It helps to break down long-term goals into more manageable, short-term goals if we need to. Having short-term goals for each day, each week and each month, will enhance our motivation and allow us to slowly make progress towards our larger, year-long goals. This way, we won’t feel pressured to make huge, sometimes daunting changes all at once.
Setting goals for the new year that focus on our mental health can be incredibly beneficial for us. Once we make these type of goals, we can also begin shaping our larger goals for other aspects of our lives. Begin making these goals for yourself now and, above all, remember to be kind to yourself throughout the process. Take note of the small victories and reward yourself along the way for how far you’ve come!
Other Helpful Articles
If you made a goal for the New Year, now might be the time when you start to slack off. This might not matter much if your New Year’s resolution was small. However, if you set mental health goals, you should take whatever steps you can to see it through. In order to help you keep your mental health as a priority this year, we have come up with a lest of mental health goals you can make. After all, taking care of both your mental and physical health is important to your overall well-being.
Don’t Give in to Negative Self-Talk
Most of the time, we tend to be harder on ourselves than other people. Maybe you beat yourself up after a minor mistake. Or maybe you forgive others when they drop the ball, but find it harder to excuse yourself for the same blunder. Whatever it is, your inner voice may be impacting your mental health.
Sometimes, you can easily notice your negative beliefs and take steps to remedy it. However, you may need some additional help. If so, you may benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. This form of talk therapy helps you identify any negative thought distortions you may have and assists in changing those views into a more rational and realistic way of thinking.
Prioritize Self-Care to Meet Your Mental Health Goals
The term “self-care” seems to be ubiquitous nowadays. The beauty of self-care is the almost endless possibilities for what you can do to take better care of yourself and improve your mental health. Here are a few ideas:
- Spend time outdoors
- Learn to say yes or no
- Make time for your hobbies
- Exercise
- Catch up on your favorite TV show
Additionally, make sure you get enough sleep each night. Research shows that sleep and mental health are intricately connected. Studies have shown that a lack of sleep can contribute to the development of some mental illnesses.
Bolster Your Support Network
People who have strong ties to their community, family members, and friends are generally healthier than those without a strong support system. Whenever you can, spend time with the people who matter to you, because not only will it help give you a sense of purpose, but it will also help your health and theirs.
If seeing people face-to-face is not possible, you can seek out a variety of online groups instead. You can reach out to people you already know on the social networks you use, or alternatively, find people who have similar interests. Many online groups exist for things like video games, sports, and a whole gamut of health issues.
Learn Healthy Ways to Deal with Stress
Unfortunately, stress is a natural part of life. However, some people have unhealthy ways of dealing with the stress they face, sometimes channeling their worries into unhealthy habits, such as drinking or using drugs. Having good coping skills when faced with difficult situations can be incredibly helpful in the long run. Other ways to channel stress include:
- Taking a walk
- Exercising
- Playing with your pet
- Journaling
Ask for Help Meeting Your Mental Health Goals
Sticking with these mental health goals may help you in the long run. Sometimes, however, you may need some extra help to maintain your mental health. Our Adult Mental Health program has a variety of treatment modalities to stabilize your mental condition and get you on the path to long-term recovery.
Remember, you can always reach out for help. You can call our admissions staff at 772-408-5871 for immediate help, and we’ll help you find a solution that fits your needs. You can also click here to fill out a contact form.
2020 was a chaotic year. A worldwide pandemic, social unrest, economic hardship, natural disasters and everything in between seemed to pack a mere 12 months. The idea of a new year, a clean slate, is a welcome chance to restart for many of us.
With the new year, you may be creating new year’s resolutions. Maybe you’ve already made a plan and stuck with it. Ultimately, the ability to self-regulate, cope with the stress of life and make meaningful achievement were surely brought to the forefront of your mind in the mayhem of the past 365 days. As you enter this new year, take lessons learned over the past year and use them as fuel to establish your own mental health goals for 2021. In order to get started, here are some quick tips for creating goals.
SMART-minded goals
Look to create “SMART” goals. This is an acronym commonly used by mental health professionals when identifying goals for clients. Use this acronym as a guideline in outlining and identifying your goals.
Specific: Making a goal more concrete will make it more practical. Instead of “I want to get in shape,” make sure you definitely outline your goal: “I want to be able to run a mile.”
Measurable: Although it is difficult to measure mental health, try to quantify when and where you can. If you’re hoping to decrease social anxiety, you might set a goal to be able to talk to a stranger for 10 minutes.
Achievable: Setting unrealistic goals may damage your confidence. Don’t say “I want to get rid of my depression this year.” Say “I want to manage my depression by developing these three coping skills…”
Relevant: Do your goals address what you’re working on directly or indirectly? Here is a little shortcut to help increase goal relevancy: a goal is the overarching thing you want to accomplish; objectives are subgoals, or steps you take to get there.
Timely: Adding a time frame to your goals can be the push you need to get things done (think words like “daily,” “weekly,” “monthly,” etc.). A goal to drink more water will aid you less than “I want to drink 8 glasses of water daily.”
Examples of mental health goals
Now that you have some tips in your back pocket for writing the most effective goals for the coming year, here are some SMART mental health goal examples for guidance or inspiration.
By the end of 2021 I will…
-
Attend weekly therapy
-
Find 3 things I can do at home that help to soothe my anxiety
-
Find 2 coping strategies I can implement away from home to soothe anxiety
-
Spend 5 minutes every morning doing deep breathing exercises
-
Learn about self-affirmation and memorize 3 statements I can repeat when anxious
-
Create a list of people who help me to manage my anxiety
-
Journal daily about triggers to anxiety and how to combat them
-
Find a safe environment to practice public speaking monthly
-
Journal daily about my emotional state
-
Identify 5 triggers to depression and a couple ways to avoid or manage each
-
Develop a daily mindfulness routine
-
Read current research regarding depression treatment on a monthly basis
-
Identify 3 people who can offer support for my depression and contact them weekly
-
Engage in a daily mood-enhancing activity (such as cooking or exercising)
-
Identify 20 positive things about my life weekly in a journal
-
Identify my 3-5 most common emotions and a couple frequent triggers for each
-
Identify 3 physiological signs of anger so I can notice it before I act on it
There are numerous studies that show the impact of external factors on mental health, including finances, community, nutrition, sleep and spirituality. Ordering your life to work on your mental health will likely include changing at least one external factor. Consider incorporating one of the following into your mental health New Year’s resolutions.
By the end of 2021 I will…
-
Attend a weekly religious service
-
Take a budgeting course
-
Call a friend once a week
-
Make one self-care purchase a month (like a nice meal or a massage)
-
Clean the apartment every week
-
Learn how to cook a new healthy recipe every other week
-
Go to the gym 3 times a week
-
Read 10 books this year
-
Stick to a regular sleep schedule, getting 8 hours a night
-
Create something that you are proud of every month (a drawing, a poem)
-
Visit a park once a month
-
Donate to a meaningful charity every month
-
Make two new friends this year
-
Meditate for 5 minutes every day
-
Use a standing desk for work
-
Visit family once a week
-
Make a budget for eating out
-
Volunteer once a month
-
Implement a calming nightly routine
-
Journal once a week
Creating goals may take some trial and error. It is ok to adapt a goal if you find it to be too easy or too unreasonable to accomplish. The important thing is getting started by setting mental health goals. Encountering setbacks and struggling to accomplish a goal is a good thing – consider it a sign that the goal is meaningful in your life and accurately addresses an area of difficulty.
As always, enlist the help of your mental health professional at The Light Program for help in identifying and managing mental health challenges. Call us at (610) 644-6464 or familiarize yourself with our services online, to take predictive steps toward a truly happy new year.
