S.M.A.R.T. GOAL-SETTING 12/1/06

By nature I am a list-maker. I make really good lists. Unfortunately, I cannot implement them. I have lists for sleeping, daily schedules, housekeeping routines, and all kinds of things. Recently, I came across a bunch of lists I had made pre-injury. I hadn't been able to manage time or anything else according to those lists either. Now, the after-effects of my traumatic brain injury has really messed with any organizational skills I possessed in those days when I was full-brained.

I threw out all of the meaningless lists and decided that I needed to start over with short goals. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I would eliminate the use of sugar in coffee. I have been able to do that. Much to my amazement, there is coffee that I recognize as being horrid. The massive sugar-dumping I was doing was fooling my taste buds into thinking that all coffee tastes good. It doesn't.

Because I had failed so badly at list-making and long-term goal-planning, I am now setting daily goals. Today, my goal was to spend x minutes sorting through the piles of stuff taking over the dining room table. Previous goals to clean the house, sort and organize, follow various housekeeping routines were untenable. I could and did spend the x minutes today. The dining room table still needs work. It will take longer than x minutes to "fix this." My x minutes is a start though, a sort of goal-ette. I feel able to continue with setting a couple of short mini-goals every day.

The whole idea of healing is to expand my horizons, not limit my participation in the world. Being unable to organize my life has constricted my life. I am done with that. Little by little, with the help of my mini-goals and the lack of time-wasting lists, I continue to progress.

Googling "goals" or "setting goals" will yield results that lead mostly to programs which wish payment for their services. Money is at a premium at the moment so that will not be happening in my life. Consequently, I have to learn how to do this the old-fashioned way, without the helpful expensive software. Other people are able to do this without the software and I can learn how to do it too.

One short thing that is useful in setting goals is the acronym S.M.A.R.T.
S.M.A.R.T. can stand for a bunch of words but the ones I like the most are:

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Tangible.

Thus:

Specific- Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Measurable- Can I put it on a chart?

Attainable- Do I have or can I get the stuff necessary to work on the goal?

Realistic- How much time and energy do I have? Is the time frame correct?

Tangible- Is the goal visible or is it mental masturbation?

With my mini-goals, the questions become focused to the here-and-now. Thus, I decided that I want to stop putting sugar in my coffee. That is specific.
If I put sugar in my coffee, that is a - and if I don't that is a + so it is measurable. [Even though I don't put it on a chart].
I am able to live without having sugar in my coffee. So it is attainable.
Not putting sugar in my coffee requires almost no energy. So it is realistic.
I have a cup of coffee in my hand without sugar. So it is tangible.

Remember, to keep your goals S.M.A.R.T.
And never give up on you.
Keep striving!

sapphoq healing tbi