Goal Setting for Addiction Recovery

Living in recovery from your addiction is a great change of pace for your life no matter how long you lived in an addictive lifestyle. You may find that the changes you need to make sometimes become overwhelming. However, one of the best ways to rid those overwhelming feelings from your life and your mind is to practice different goal setting techniques. There are many of them out there but certain ones have worked better for some recovering addicts than others. Before you learn more about how to set goals properly in your recovery from an addiction you should learn a bit more about how goal setting can help you out in your recovery.

What are the best ways that setting goals can help you in recovery?

If you are living your life in recovery from an addiction then you should be congratulating yourself every single day because that is amazing. Now before you can learn more about how you can set goals the proper way during your recovery you should know more about how goal setting can help you out. By realizing how these goals can help you, you may be more motivated to continue in recovery. There are many ways that setting goals can help you in recovery from your addiction. One of the first ways that it can help is that you can feel like your life has more meaning. You can also make your dreams turn into reality by making them goals in your life. By setting goals you will be able to keep track of your progress as well.

What is the first step for setting goals in your recovery from addiction?

You can set goals in your recovery that will fit your lifestyle. The first step for setting goals in recovery is to create goal statements for each goal that you have. These statements should be effective. Some of the ways that you can make sure they are effective is making sure they have a purpose, make sure they have action to them and put a deadline on them as well. These are some of the best ways that you can make your goals effective. During the creation of your personal development plan you can set goals too.

What is the second step for setting goals in recovery?

When you create any goals in your recovery or in your personal development plan you should make sure that each goal is broken down into steps. The smaller the steps are the easier the goal will seem. When you look at the goal and you only have one thing to do at a time such as making it a week without spending over a certain amount instead of making it three months, it will be easier. 

What is the third step for setting goals in recovery?

The third and final goal that you should know about when you are creating and setting goals for your recovery is to look over your progress and decide if you need to make any changes. Sometimes the way that you set up a goal can make all of the difference to how it is carried out. When you are looking over your personal development plan goals and you realize that you haven’t been able to keep up with a certain goal, it may be as simple as needing to change something small about the goal. An example of this could be how much you do with the goal each day (you may not be taking on enough or you may be taking on too much).

Setting up and taking on goals in your recovery from addiction is a fantastic idea. In fact, doing so can help you to stay clean and sober longer. It can also help you to make more progress in your recovery too. Goals give you a realistic way to see your life now and how you want it to go in the future as well. Have you been setting any goals in your life or in your recovery? If not, it really is never too late to start. Pick something that you want in life, set a goal for it and follow the steps mentioned here today. You can do it.

- Cara Gilmore

References:

http://americanaddictioncenters.org/set-effective-goals-recovery/

http://www.jeremybrandt.com/how-to-hit-your-goals-infographic/