This past Friday I got to take part in a breakfast and talk at The Roeper School, to which they were kind to invite me.  Not only did the tour of their Lower School campus satisfy my curiosity about “what’s up with those concrete igloo things?” I’d seen driving by on Woodward in the past, but I got to learn more about gifted children, their education and the school.  I learned more about the traits and needs of gifted children, how they are viewed and identified, inconsistencies between the definition of “gifted” between states, and how it applies to individual children (and adults).

I was especially interested in their approach to education with a focus on children’s individual pace and abilities and using children’s natural curiosity to drive them to learn and achieve.  It is always interesting to me to see the intersection of what works well in meeting the needs of children (and adults) with special needs, challenges, and abilities, and how much overlap there is with what all children need and helps them thrive.

Roeper’s focus on community, building relationships, and valuing the importance of the children’s relationships with each other, including the use of Restorative Justice in addressing conflict and behavior, gave me an especially good feeling about the school community.  Not to mention all the friendly little faces that greeted us all on the tour of the Lower School.

So thank you, Roeper, for an informative and enjoyable morning.  And thanks to all the other participants of the morning.  I know I connected with some good resources for future referrals to help out clients.  I’m hoping that my practice can also add something to the community.

“When you’re trying to motivate yourself, appreciate the fact that you’re even thinking about making a change. And as you move forward, allow yourself to be good enough.”
~Alice Domar

Everyone has dreams they want to realize and big goals they want to achieve.  That’s often part of what keeps people from reaching their goals – only having the big, ambitious goals.  Absolutely, you should aim high and believe in yourself, but it can be easy to get frustrated and discouraged while on this long journey.  A few setbacks and you may feel like you’re never going to accomplish your goals.  You may even question if you’ve made any progress at all.  Worse, you may only be measuring yourself against this ultimate goal, and only be satisfied when you get there.  Everyone needs some encouragement along the way.

Marathons have mile markers for a reason.  It feels great to see your progress every mile!  Without them it would be much easier for thoughts like “I’m never going to get there” to creep into your head.  Like mile markers, you need goals along the way to focus on, work toward, and celebrate when you get there.

There are 2 main factors to accomplishing goals.  The first is developing good goals and a plan to accomplish them.  The second is putting in the work.  Putting in the work is all about consistency and motivation.  You have to consistently put in the work to progress toward your goals, and that means staying motivated to keep working and not give up.

There are many articles and blog posts that go over guidelines for writing good goals.  The basics on that are that your goals should be: specific, measurable, realistically attainable, meaningful to you, and are planned to be achieved within a specific length of time.  A common system for writing goals according to those guidelines uses the acronym S.M.A.R.T. .  You can follow that link for more information on that.  With this blog I wanted to focus more on the smaller goals on your way to your big goals, and keeping up the motivation to achieve them.  This is where you do the daily work that gets you there and where you build the positive momentum to power your progress.

If you have some big, ambitious goals, or even if you wrote out some good, attainable goals that are measurable and time-bound, I want to encourage you to break those down into smaller steps.  What are the steps you need to take to get to those big goals?  What can you accomplish this week?  Today?  Maybe even something you can accomplish in the next hour!  To meet any goal you have to start with your first step, and taking that step alone can be cause for celebrating an accomplishment!

Be your own cheerleader, not your critic.

Any little step can be a reason for celebration.  Focus on small victories and resist the urge to judge yourself.  We can try to motivate ourselves with an inner drill sergeant, thinking that will motivate use to do more than we even thought we could.  This can easily become a negative and critical voice, pointing out our flaws, belittling our accomplishments as not good enough, comparing ourselves negatively to others, and generally beating us down until we quit.  We most often do better by being a cheerleader for ourselves with a positive focus and encouraging words, reinforcing our efforts and successes and being more gentle when have set backs with encouragement to try again and keep working.  When you notice you’re judging yourself try to find the positives and offer yourself encouragement instead.

Part of celebrating our small steps of progress includes recognizing the accomplishments we take for granted.  We often dismiss things that we “should” do and don’t give ourselves any credit for doing them.  Sure, you might be expected to “just” shower regularly and to do the dishes, but the dishes don’t just wash themselves.  If you put the work in, give yourself the credit.  Especially if it was hard for you or you weren’t motivated to do it in the first place.  Celebrating these accomplishments can motivate you to keep doing them and eventually get the motivation and momentum to do more.  Maybe these types of chores are things you see as daily nuisances that are interfering with your working on your “real” goals.  To avoid these obstacles becoming excuses, take them seriously and focus on them until they’re done, giving yourself credit for your accomplishments and moving on to your next task.

Do you know what’s better than a “to do” list?  A “done” list.  What have you already done?  These are accomplishments!  Take joy in marking things off as done on your “to do” list.  I suggest even writing things in that you already did and marking them off.  We have a tendency to look forward at all of the things we have yet to do and not look back at what we have already accomplished.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed and discouraged looking at everything you still have to do.  There you are, in the moment, looking at all this stuff that might take hours, weeks, months, even years to complete!  Of course you’re overwhelmed, you can’t do all of that stuff right now.  You can only work on one thing at a time.

Learn to take joy in the process of working toward your goals.  There may be other things that you’d rather be doing while you’re working on accomplishing your goal, whatever it may be.  However, you chose to work on this for a reason.  Thinking of that reason can be motivating.

Having trouble just getting started?  Planning to do something IS doing something.  You’ve already begun.  However, you should only think ahead when you’re planning, otherwise you can start getting overwhelmed and talk yourself out of trying.  Be in the moment and start and you’ll start to get some momentum.

Enlist Help

Sharing your goals, progress and accomplishments with others can be fun and motivating and give yourself the message that you are serious and your goals are real.  The support of others who care about us can be helpful and motivating, especially if someone joins you to work on your goals together.  And sometimes it is helpful to enlist the help of experts to accomplish your goal.  If you’re trying to learn a skill or complete a project, an expert in that field can give you advise or teach you the necessary skills.  If you’re trying to make change in your life, working with a change expert – a therapist, can help you make the changes you seek and reach your goals.

This could be looked at as a dreary day.  I see the grey skies, but I choose to focus on the beauty of the clouds.  The roads and trails are hard, icy and slippery, but they are also beautiful, covered by a light dusting of snow.  The air is cold to breathe and it does hurt my face a little, but it is also invigorating and makes me feel awake and alive.  I would like blue skies, warm air and green grass, but I can’t have that right now.  I can’t control the weather, but I can choose to accept what the day gives me, make the most of it, and be thankful for it.

It takes effort to be happy.  We can’t choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we react to what happens and how we feel about it.  I’d have liked a brighter, warmer, sunnier day when I went out today, but I found the beauty in the day I had.  To better cope with life’s difficulties and be happier we need to accept the negative and look for the silver lining.  While I didn’t get a sunny day yesterday, I did find beauty and novelty that I would have missed if I’d just stayed home where it was warm.

We all must be able to feel our feelings, including the negative ones, and to “vent” and share them sometimes.  But when we stay stuck focusing on what we are unhappy with it is often because we are trying to fight against it.  When we accept things as they are we can give up fighting reality and accept where we are, to move forward.  It also helps to realize the balance of good and bad that is inherent in most everything.  At the least, things can very nearly always be worse.  The snow could be rain, the rain could be freezing, you could be homeless from a hurricane. Nearly all days we can find some positive things in the day itself and bad days are nearly always followed by better days.  Research shows that a daily practice of identifying things that we are thankful for makes us happier and has positive effects on depression.

Every day, life gives us challenges, responsibilities and distractions, and often things that we are not happy about.  We can focus on how much we aren’t happy about them, feeling frustrated, angry, like it’s all unfair.  Or we can make the effort to accept these things and look for the positive.  There is almost always a silver lining if you try hard enough to find one.  I started this blog in my head while out for a run this morning.  I was hesitant to get out the door because it was cold, kind of dreary, and later in the day than I would like.  As I came to focus on my surroundings I began to appreciate being out and moving and enjoying my surroundings.  I became inspired to stop home for my phone to take some pictures and write about how I found happiness today.

New Year’s Day is traditionally a time for new beginnings, resolutions and goal setting.  It can be an exciting opportunity for making positive change.  It can also be a time of reflecting on past resolutions that have not worked out.  The flip side of an exciting opportunity is fearing failure.  We often fail at our goals because we don’t have good goals to begin with.  To succeed in making positive change we need specific and achievable goals and a plan to achieve them.  Attitude also makes a huge difference.  When we judge our success strictly as pass/fail we can easily become discouraged by a bad day, a bad week, or even a one moment of weakness.  It is much more encouraging to identify and celebrate progress as you go.  All progress is progress.

Write SMART goals.  Yes, you have to write them out.

SMART: Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Bound.

Specific – A clear and well defined goal provides direction and provides you with the ability to identify when you have achieved it.  It is important and helpful to write down your goal because it makes it real.  Making the effort to write it down indicates to yourself that you mean it.  Writing also helps to make it more specific as you choose your words to write it down.  When it is written down you can refer back to it to see what your goal was.  It is more motivating when a goal is written in positive terms: “eat vegetables daily” as opposed to “eat less cake”; “work out 3 times a week” as opposed to “don’t be a couch potato.”

Measurable – There must be something to count for a goal to be measurable.  This allows you to identify when you are making progress and compare with where you were when you started.  It is fine to have a big goal, but then it is also helpful to write short term goals or process goals – these are the steps you need to take on your way to achieving a larger goal.  If one wants to lose 30 pounds that is a measurable goal, but one that is going to take some steps to achieve.  Writing a goal for the first 5 pounds gives you a stepping stone to that larger goal.  Writing a goal to exercise three times a week and to not eat fast food, eat vegetables daily, and make more meals at home than one is currently doing are all measurable process goals that will provide motivation on the way to the larger goal.

Attainable – Make goals something that you are likely to be able to accomplish.  Otherwise, goals end up being self-defeating and discouraging, even demoralizing.  Often, when one has thoughts like “I never accomplish my goals,” they are beating themselves up and attributing past failures to personal short comings when in reality they just never learned to write useful goals.  This is more reason to write short term goals toward reaching your larger goal, to provide more manageable goals and encouragement on the way to your larger goal.

Relevant – Make your goals relevant to your needs, desires and values.  This helps you make progress in your life and ensures that you have real motivation to work toward these goals.  If you are not really motivated and ready to work toward a goal then you will not be successful.  If you are making a goal because others say you should do it but it isn’t really important to you, then you are less likely to be successful.

Time Bound – Goals should have a deadline to motivate you to work to achieve them.  A deadline sets a sense of urgency to get started and work toward your goal.  Without a deadline it is easy to procrastinate.  A deadline also builds in a time to evaluate and celebrate progress and evaluate and adjust goals.  When a deadline comes and a goal has not been met is a critical time where it is easy to get discouraged, but is a good opportunity to fine-tune your goals and planning.  If a goal has not yet been met it can mean that the goal wasn’t specific enough, was too ambitious or more work needs to be put into planning HOW to achieve the goal.

This is also a good time to identify and celebrate progress toward your goal, even if you didn’t achieve it.  If your goal was to lose 10 pounds by this date and you only lost 8 you have 8 pounds to celebrate!  If you didn’t lose any weight but you’ve made some healthy changes to your diet you have still done something positive for yourself that you can celebrate.  Make an effort to find positives to motivate yourself to keep trying.  Did you work toward your goal for a month then lose motivation?  Great job on working toward your goal for a month!  How did you feel about that month?  Just making a goal is a small step toward that goal.  Every time we set a goal we are making an effort to change behaviors in our life, which is a hard thing to do.  Just making the effort is a step toward change.   All progress is progress.

It’s the middle of the Holiday Season.  If that statement causes you stress you are probably actually in the majority.  Even for those that love the holidays, this time of year can bring mixed feelings, stress, sadness and depression.  This time for family and friends, this “most magical time of the year,” brings with it increased expectations and pressure, largely because it is “supposed to be” happy.  Every cloud has a silver lining, but it can feel like only silver linings are allowed when the holidays come around.  That just isn’t reality.  Pretending the dark clouds aren’t there can leave one feeling alone and their feelings invalidated.  The term “the holiday blues” exists precisely because it is a common feeling.  You are not alone in feeling this way and keeping it to yourself will isolate you further.  You don’t have to accept the expectations of loving the holidays or being happy all of the time.  It can help to acknowledge what is hard for you about the holidays.  Discussing this with people that you trust can be especially helpful, even freeing, and lead to less isolation and guilt.

Realistic Expectations

Having realistic expectations of the holidays, of yourself, and of others, can help prevent disappointment and crisis when things do go wrong.  Just because it’s the holidays everything will not go right.  Expecting everything to be perfect, magical, or just like you think you remember it being as a child creates too much pressure and sets you up to fail.  We build up our expectations before any anticipated event to where they can’t possibly match our dreams.  Even in the best of times, most anyone can feel let down when a much-anticipated event actually happens.  However enjoyable, one can have thoughts like “is this it?” or “I thought it would be better.”  And afterward, “it’s over, now what?”  These thoughts are common, practically universal, and don’t mean that it was a bad experience.  Nothing is all bad or all good and being mindful of this balance can help.

Social Demands/Stress

Try to make the holidays easy for yourself by getting an early start on the things you have to do and not asking too much of yourself.  There is so much stuff to do this time of year that it can become overwhelming.  The holidays can even be too much of a good thing with so many things to do and people to see that we cannot possibly do it all.  Be realistic in planning how much you can do and plan ahead.  Identify the things that are important to you that you really want to do and those that you really have to do.  Next, which things do you not want to do?  Set limits for yourself and don’t spread yourself too thin.  You can always choose to do more when the time comes, but if you make everything a requirement then when you don’t do it all you’re likely to feel that you’ve failed.  Plan for and focus on the parts of the season you enjoy to help balance the stress. Plan and make happen the things that you definitely want to do.  Total avoidance does not work, but you don’t have to be in the holiday spirit all of the time.  Plan yourself breaks for “me time,” and take care of yourself.  This can be especially motivating and restorative following completing some things you felt you “had to do.”

Gift Giving

The pressure of gift giving can be a major stressor, whether it is the financial burden, feeling the need to find the perfect gift, or the stress of having to put the time and effort into shopping.  Pleasing others through gift giving can become tied to one’s sense of self-worth.  You cannot please everyone.  Keeping this in mind can help manage expectations.  Gifts should be about thoughtfulness.  Someone being less pleased with a gift than you would like is beyond your control.  Being honest with yourself about what you can comfortably give can help limit stress within your own life, which is something that you do have some control over.

Family Conflict

For some families getting together for the holidays can mean revisiting old hurts, grudges and family conflict.  Awareness of what is likely to go wrong can be helpful for being prepared, but dreading and worrying about it can only ruin your enjoyment of the holidays leading up to it.  It can help to set limits on what you will discuss and practicing limit setting and redirection statements.  Hot button topics to avoid can include politics or any issues that tend to lead to conflict in your family.  Attempts to discuss these issues can be responded with such statements as “I’m not talking about that today,” “this is a topic that usually leads to arguments, let’s talk about something else,” or “what I really want to hear about is…(insert something innocuous that the person you are talking to will likely enjoy talking about).  It can also be helpful to commit to being an observer.  Step back and observe the family dynamics without taking part.  Focus on not being emotionally involved with the conflict as well.  You are not responsible if other people are arguing and it is not your responsibility to fix it.

Grief

Holidays are largely about tradition and when someone is absent it is especially noticeable.  It is common to struggle with grief and loss around the holidays.  It can be helpful to be aware and prepared for this and not to try to avoid or deny it.  Holidays can be a good time to honor the memory of a loved one and to share memories of them.

Having realistic expectations and acknowledging the bad with the good can help when it comes to coping with and trying to enjoy the holidays.  Discussing your feelings about the holidays with others can help you to feel supported and better able to cope.  Sharing your plans coping plan with someone supportive can help keep you focused on your coping plan and give you someone you can share your success and struggles with.  If you or someone you know is feeling especially hopeless this holiday season, caring professionals are still available and want to help.  Emergency rooms and 911 are always open, as well as crisis hotlines.  The National Suicide Hotline can always be called at 800-273-8255 and even texted at 741-741.

Everyone experiences anxiety, about something, to some degree.  I’m starting a blog.  I’ve never done this before.  I’ve been planning to do this for a while and it has been causing me some anxiety.  This is doing something new, stepping outside my comfort zone a little.  Now that I’ve started writing I’m already feeling a little better about it.  It’s not so bad.  I’ve written a few sentences – I know how to do that.  I told myself that, and it helped…yet I still have doubts.  I can listen to those doubts and get stuck.  I can procrastinate and do something easier.  Or, I can focus and write.  Not judge.  Just write.

I’m starting a blog so I can reach more people with my counseling practice, beyond the walls of my counseling practice, and help more people.  If you’re reading this and you think that you might want to meet with a therapist, then hopefully my blog can help you decide that seeing a therapist could be a helpful thing.  This blog might help you get to know me and feel that therapy with me would be a good fit, and it might help you decide to schedule an appointment.  Maybe my blog can help you prepare to take the step to find and schedule with the right therapist for you, whoever that may be.  It is my hope that my blog can impart some knowledge, understanding, perspective or coping skill that can help you or someone that you care about.  I expect that writing a blog will also help me to grow as a therapist.  With this blog I intend to explore, revisit and develop my training and experiences, and to research and expand on that knowledge and those skills as I cover various topics related to counseling, psychology, relationships, and coping with and enjoying everyday life.

A common theme in my therapy work is that we are all similar.  However different or alone we may feel, we all are more similar than we are different.  We all experience the same basic emotions and go through many of the same experiences.  We all worry about being good enough.  That is a worry that can stop us from even trying when challenged, or it can challenge us to rise to the occasion.  It can also do both at once, working at counter-purposes and keeping us from succeeding.  Rising to the challenge can mean trying to do the very best job and striving for perfection.  Judging ourselves against perfection we are going to fail every time.  As such, I am going to try to write a good blog.  A helpful blog.  But not a perfect blog.  I will edit, but I will strive to accept what mistakes I make and remind myself that a pretty good blog is better than the perfect blog that never gets written.