Goals (not resolutions) for the New Year

Over the past several years, I have tried to make a list of goals for the new year.  I have not been successful every year in making the list, but it has been helpful when I do.  I think that creating a list of goals makes for a more positive outlook and a balanced life.

I got interested in making lists of goals after listening to a tape by Charles Givens.  He decided on what he wanted to do and achieve.   He said that his list of goals were items that he wrote down with a marker on a pad of paper.  Givens said that when he got done with the list he came up with another list of things that he wanted to do.

Goals: What are they?

My definition of a goal is a desired, specific accomplishment or achievement.  For the purpose of this post--a goal can also be a project.  They can take a few minutes or they can take years.  They can be big or small.  We can have goals for the minute, hour, day, or our lives.

I frankly think that a healthy goal should be something that takes no more than a few years at the most (although it took me seven (7) years to get my Ph.D.).  Otherwise we tend to waste energy when we could accomplish smaller tasks that matter to us.

How do we decide the goals we pursue?

There are many sources of goals.  Ideally goals arise out of our values and principles.  Goals also arise out of corporate mission statements, which are related to individual values and principles.  Goals also arise out of our interests and curiosities.  Goals also arise out of our less-than desirable circumstances (we may decide that we need to find a new job, career, or living situation).

What makes for a good goal?

A good goal should be concrete, measurable, reasonable, and achievable.  A good goal should push you a little and make you work and stretch yourself so that you grow.

To say I want to be a better person or I want to be skinny are not concrete but vague and nebulous and nowhere likely to be accomplished--and lead to hopelessness and frustration and lower self-esteem.  More concrete goals in these cases are I am going to stop swearing or gossiping or I am going to join Weight Watchers and endeavor to lose 30 pounds.

To say I want to be the next Tom Cruise is concrete, and probably measureable, but the only way I could be the next Tom Cruise is to go and legally change my name--and will not make me achieve Hollywood Star status making millions of dollars a picture.  (I actually relish my plain average person status and feel relieved sometimes that the Tabloids are not interested in me and that  Paparazzi do not follow me around trying to get embarassing and unflattering pictures).  Some concrete goals are nothing more than pipe dreams.

Examples of Goals:

The following are lists of good and reasonable goals for average people.

• Run or walk in a mini marathon.
• Plant a garden if you have the space
• Read five books in different subject areas.
• Save a specific amount of money.
• Get specific projects done in your house.
• Redo your resume.
• Find a new job.
• Take a night class (a foreign language class would be good).
• Take the ACT, SAT or GRE test this year.
• Go back to school
• Get a new professional certification
• Go on a vacation to someplace different.
• Build a wood project or an electronic project.

End result: Satisfaction and fulfillment

One of my most challenging projects on my lists over the years was re-doing the floor of the workroom of my garage in 2010.  The original owner/builder of the garage put down tile back in the 1970s.  It was ugly and moldy due to dry rot and what the regular flooding did to the adhesive.  I had to stop in part due to distraction from family medical issues, and I had to figure someway to remove the tile because I kept going through propane torches trying to heat the tile.  It took me trial and error but I ended up using a hatchet to chop at the tile.  I then finally was able to epoxy paint the floor in 2010. 

It was a simple goal that turned out not to be so simple and it challenged me, but I still feel very good about the accomplishment.  It looks good and I did it myself. There was something about the process that stretched me in figuring out how to get the job done. 

Limits: don't create too long of a list

If this idea of a list of goals appeals to you, go for it.  However, I think some restraint is in order.  I think a list of goals should be no longer than 10 goals.  When people make too many goals the size of the list can be overwhelming and people never get anything done. There is always the option of adding to the list when you accomplish the goals.

I hope that your 2012 is a year full of satisfaction and achievement because you set good goals to make your life better.  

Resolutions: The self-torture prior to New Years Day.

I usually hear something every year about resolutions.  With the turn of the new year, we want to do that we should have done.  Many want to stop cussing, drink less, be nicer or mainly lose weight.

Of course I think that I am a sucker for resolutions.  I make my few--usually about weight loss.

Nearly everyone who makes them is unable to keep them for longer than a few days.  However, it never fails to amaze me that that the different weight loss products take a center spot in stores about now.  I figure that many people will buy one box or one cannister and it will sit partially empty for the rest of the year.

I think that most resolutions fail because they are vague, general goals.  They are also generally drastic in nature versus achievable.  To get skinny is a lot harder than to lose 20 pounds.

I think that many people stress over the large or radical goals that they want to achieve; they are being too idealistic.  They push themselves and immediately start dreading the possible misery that the changes will encounter. They cannot keep it up and soon feel depressed that they failed. 

Sustainability

It is my opinon that for us to make changes that mean something, we have to be able to sustain them--that is be able to keep them going.   We should have expectations that are realistic . . . in other words they are lower and go slower or take longer.  The lower our expectations and the slower we are able to go, the more sustainable the goal or resolution is.

I think that it is harder to go slower on many resolutions because of what I call the microwave oven effect.  We can do a lot of other things faster in this world that include rapid heating of food in a microwave and send information on the internet.  However, there are many other goals and tasks that are going to take time regardless of how fast we can get other things done.

Frustration Tolerance

When we ponder that achievements like weight loss are going to take time, we get frustrated.  People who cannot work through the feeling of frustration either do not start or do not finish the race.  A scholar and professional named Marsha Lenihan noted that many need to develop the coping skills to handle and tolerate the feeling of frusration. Being able to feel the frusration is half the battle.


Concluding thoughts

Well, if you are pondering a resolution for the new year and feeling scared or dread, consider slowing down.  It is your life and unless you get into an office weight-loss contest life is otherwise not a race.  You and I live life at the pace we essentially choose. When you and I feel like we have to compete with others in achieving resolutions, we torture ourselves even more.  It does not have to be that way.

The future--don't get carried away worrying about it.

With the coming of the new year, people do contemplate and worry about what the new year will bring.  We're getting older, we may not have been satisfied or we were disappointed with 2011 . . . the list could go on as to why to dread the new year.

2011 has had its dread.  The Reverend Harold Camping made his two predictions.  Many are freaking out about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012. 

Throughout my life, I have seen doom-sayer after doom-sayer make predictions and then crawl away after their 15 minutes of notoriety.  Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, there were countless people engaged in studying and rehashing prophecy about who was the anti-christ and when Jesus was coming back.

I am one of those people who have decided not to get carried away about how or when the world is going to end . . . at least now.   I find that too much emotion and not enough logic is behind all of those scares.  Perhaps I am cynical--no one is perfect.

When it comes down to it, I have to take a few cues from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.  There is nothing new under the sun--stuff comes around again.  All economic forecasting is basically a form of saying the past is going to be the future.   However, to me the most salient statement in Ecclesiastes is 7:14,

When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. (NIV)

I think that the passages of the Bible indicate that people have always dreaded the future.  Some generations had more to dread than others. 

History is always a good teacher.  While nothing is guaranteed, the world has kept turning. 

Getting spiritual for a moment, there are a few things that believers in God can take comfort in.  There is a future and Jesus Christ is coming back. When is a mystery, but it will happen.  Until then you and I have a choice as to how we are to live--hopefully in the wisest possible way.

That being said, I blend in a secular statement from Wayne Dyer:

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

And so it was Christmas . . . and what had you done? Does it matter now?

December 26 has came and is almost gone.  It is now a symbol that the great capitalist economic engine moves on after exploiting a holy day with its after-Christmas sales.

The Christmas music has stopped playing in retail stores, and the all-Christmas-music all-the-time format has given way to the regular Gen-X or light-rock rotations.  I was almost embarrassed today when my kids were pressing practically all the Christmas music digital samples on a compact disc display in the Christmas section today of a store.  I was sick of Christmas music, and I imagine others are too (although they will still be playing Christmas music at the "Feast of the Epiphany" mass).  

The different discount retailers I had visited have slashed prices on the now passe' Christmas items--and most of the Christmas items are gone.  They have started to put out New Years party items and over-the-counter diet pills and diet shake powders.  I figure tomorrow they will start putting out Valentine items, and before you know it there will be Easter items.  

There is the reality that no matter how you feel the world moves on. Yesterday may have been meaningful, empty, lonely, sad, tumulteous, enraging, or just plain dismal for you, but the media, economy, and the world are moving on.   Some of us may still be licking our wounds, but the world is calling us to move on with it regardless of our pain or nostalgia.

What keeps us in the past?

We usually stay in the past when there is anger.  We continue to dwell on the pain and abuse suffered at the hands of others.   When we dwell on the anger, we usually are simultaneously angry at ourselves because we could have and should have done something to defend ourselves or defeat the scumbucket abuser.  In this case to move out of the past there is the need to forgive ourselves and forgive the offender in order to stop wasting energy on the past.

Some do continue to be nostalgic and dwell on how the past was better than the present.  Given the current recession and high unemployment rate, this is not unreasonable.   The author of Ecclesiastes noted thousands of years ago that people were doing this then too:

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
For it is not wise to ask such questions. (Ecclesiastes 7:10) (NIV)

I think that we all get nostalgic at times when times are tough--it reminds us that things have been good for us and not all bad, but too much of it also keeps people in the past. 

Nostalgia is an idealistic rememberance of the past that ignores that it had problems too.  For example, I remember my now-dying grandmother being nostalgic in 1983 how cheap college tuition was during the great depression years, but the reality was that no one had much money and so supply had to reach down to demand when it came to pricing.  Nostalgia also can spend way too much of our energy needed for today.

 Things matter only as much as we let them

Whether yesterday was great or terrible, it will matter today and tomorrow as much as we let it matter.  The amount of time we spend thinking about it and the intensity of emotion we allow show how much something or someone matters. 

If we have been nursing a grudge for years, we have been investing a lot in the pain.  Just beginning to forgive ourselves and our offenders is a grief process in itself.  We have been putting so much of our time and resources feeling angry and thinking about what was done to us and researching (versus fantastizing) alternative options for revenge.

There comes a point in time where the hurt and pain becomes irrelevant to our situation.  After so much passage of time the average person in our circles cannot relate to us when we talk about bitterness we have carried for so long.  They cannot even begin to relate to the embarrassments or incidents or issues of 1978 or 1987 or even 1997.   It goes back to things matter only as much as you let them matter today because they are only in your memory.

Well, I have to move on too.  I am thinking to the future, and my next posts will relate to the future. 

Peace in the Quiet on Christmas Day

Well, today is Christmas Day, a day where we remember the coming of the Prince of Peace.  The world around me seems quiet.   It is not all quiet as the news had stories about two churches in Africa being bombed by Islamic groups.  But for me the freeway that is about 120 feet away is quiet and I have not heard any sirens.  The traffic was light to church and back.   

The children got along for the most part until they had some typical sibling rivalry while playing Wii before church.  Except for the dishwasher and television, the house is quiet as we settle down to quiet time and naps.

At church we sang I heard the bells on Christmas Day. I saw someone roughly a century and a half ago struggling with the issue of justice and hate on Christmas Day. 

And in despair I bowed my head
There is no peace on earth I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men

The author's encounter with God comes through the ringing of these bells in that the music (not words speak to him):

Then rang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men
Then ringing singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men

Given my journey and my expectations, I can look at today and say that the silence will be good today.  As I reflect, it has not always been good.

The silence and quiet is sometimes scary

For silence to be enjoyed there often has to be peace within a person, and of course one of the phrases is "peace on earth and good will towards man."  People hope and expect to find peace at Christmas, and religious faith does not always seem to cut it.

However, peace depends on one's expectation.   If our expectations are not met and we are not feeling a sense of contentment, we will likely feel unsettled and uncomfortable inside.  The silence often is uncomfortable as we feel the anxiety.

I have came to decide that there is an emotional continuum when it comes to silence and being alone.

Need                       Ambivalence                                   Need
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Privacy                   Content                                            Loneliness

At one end is need where we seek privacy and we set boundaries and be by ourselves.  At the other end is the need for people and we are feeling lonely.   In the middle we have a point where we at a relative sense of peace and we are ambivalent or we could care less about being around people.

It has been my opinion that when we have anxiety and pain, we generally have a difficult time being alone with our thoughts and we cannot stand the silence.   When leading therapy groups over the years, I have seen people start to giggle nervously when the room grows quiet--their anxiety was too high to be able to stand the silence.

We also are more likely to feel lonely when we are thinking about our regrets, our hurts, and our unfulfilled expectations.  If someone is a survivor who is guarded and stays away from people, the loneliness may be more intense than they would care to admit, but they are able to make it look they just need more privacy.

Peace is a choice and a priority

As I have noted elsewhere in these blog posts, we have choices.  We have choices with our activities, words, and thoughts.  Peace within a person is a choice.  Sometimes it takes work and practice.
In a sense it is an act of faith.  Too many people think that if they let their guard down, they are going to miss something. 

Not everything in this world is too important to miss.  Everything will have its importance at one time or another.  Everything cannot be of equal importance at the same time. 

Furthermore, not everything demands attention at this time.  We usually can prioritize matters as to when they are due.  It is amazing how much more peace and comfort people feel when they prioritize.

Too many of us dwell on the pain of the past.  It is only as important as we prioritize it.  We will remember it, but dwelling sometines makes it too important and we disrupt our inner peace, afterall, we can do nothing to resolve the past--it is gone except in how we remember it.  Dwelling on the past can create a sense of loneliness and anxiety.

Tomorrow has yet to come.  We will deal with it when we get there.  Worrying about it can also create a sense of loneliness and anxiety.

Today only has to be as complicated as we make it.  In the uncomplicated present we can deal with it to a relative satisfaction and we can create some sense of peace even with a dying relative or a toxic relative drinking their fifth beer and getting belligerant.

As usual, I can do this for me, but I cannot do it for you.  I hope that you are able to choose and find peace in the quiet of this Christmas Day.

Yep. It is Christmas Eve. Did you get ready?

It is Christmas Eve and the stores have been closed for about five hours.  For those of us survivalists out there, we have made our last trip to the grocery store and we either have what we need or we will "suffer" without it for 32 hours while Hurricane "December 25" comes and goes.

Yes, we have heard nothing but Christmas music and talk about Christmas on TV, on the Radio, in the newspapers, and in the everyday talk amongst co-workers, neighbors, friends, and acquaintances.  We will still not get away from Christmas until December 26 when Christmas Day has passed.  

Assuming that you are amongst the survivors, did you get ready?  Do you have your coping skills and strategies in place?  Do you have your affirmations that you will repeat to yourself?  Do you have your plans for how to respond to abusive and intrusive relatives at family gatherings?   It is time to be ready because the time has arrived. 

Some people never get ready

I do think that some people never get ready.  I remember one particular patient.  While she had chronic mental illness, she actually presented as quite intelligent.  She claimed to have no friends, no money, and no family to go to at Christmas.  She was a very difficult patient in that she contradicted everything I suggested and she regularly canceled sessions just before the scheduled time with an insincere-sounding 'sorry.'  

She liked to call at the last minute on the last workday before the Christmas holiday and complain that she had nothing and she was lonely.  The first time I felt sorry.  The second time, I believed it was a bit.   She didn't want to take the advice and she made her choices.

I concluded that she just liked the victim role.  She controlled others with it and she made a lot of enemies while taking liberties under the guise of victimhood.  However, to this day I occasionally wonder if she just liked to yank chains or if she was really as bad off as she claimed to be?   Whatever it was she was a miserable person that either did not want to plan or wouldn't tell you if she did.

Some plans do fall through

While some people refuse to plan, some people have plans fall through. In this life, we have plans, and then we have what actually happens.  Some people will find themselves alone this Christmas for numerous reasons when they originally had plans.

If our plans fall through, we have to look at the choices available to us.  The choices are not always attractive and it can be a matter of which is least objectionable--you plug your nose and choose the less-stinky one.

We have all had plans fall through. The good news for most people is that they have resilience and can problem-solve and create a "plan B" or even plans C, D. or F. Christmas will not likely be as good as originally planned, but the experience of Christmas will be found to have some good in it.

The important statement is we have to look at the choices available to us. We will not all have the same choices.  But we have choices.  I can only make my choices while you can only make your choices.  

December 25 has 24 hours like every other day

If you are still dreading Christmas for whatever reason and cannot come up with any other plan but to stay in bed, I offer that it has 24 hours like every other day on the calendar.  December 25 will end and society will get back to its normal rhythms of life and then we can get lost in the normal madness of regular life. 

A Relative Near Death at the Holidays: What matters today?.

As I wrote earlier on November 30, death knows no holidays.  People will die after long illnesses and then people will die suddenly.  It doesn't affect us until it is a member of our family.  This holiday weekend many people will be in hospitals with their critically ill and terminally ill loved ones.  Many people will be called to nursing homes and hospices because the time is drawing near.   It will be a difficult holiday for which many will  survive.

Today I am one of them.   A few days ago, we got a tip off of my cousin's Facebook page that my grandmother was not doing well and did not seem to have very long.  (In my family . . . information is where you get it as we are not particularly close and live long distances from each other.)  My wife called for me and got more specific information--it was not looking good--in summary--my grandmother was slowly slipping away.

I wavered over the decision whether to come or not come.  I decided to make the run just before Christmas Eve to see her at least one last time.

Yes, my 101-year-old grandmother has bugged me over the years in one way or another.  Even though I am in my mid-40's, she still talked to me as if she saw me as the little kid.  She reminded me last year that as a five-year-old I still promised to hug her.  (Berne was a genius in his Transactional Analysis theory--because it describes my relationship with my grandmother to a "T."   She still talks to me as a little kid even though I have two masters and a doctorate.)

Being human

Even though I am a mental health professional, I am still very much human.  We mental health professionals as humans still have feelings.  We cannot look objectively at everything.  On the personal side of things, we have to be human.  For me, I have to say that I am numb as a reaction to this situation.

Hopefully, a mental health professional practices what they preach, but in my experience, I have met many mental health professionals who do not practice what they preach.  They can reach over the professional-patient boundary to tell patients how to do things, but their private world is quite often a hot mess.  For them there is a grave lack of integrity between what they practice and what they preach to the point that they are the pot calling the kettle black and are just miserable colleagues to be around.

Over the years, I have sought to suggest only things I would do myself or have tried myself.  My patients and clients are my fellow human beings that I serve.  I may be the professional, but they are of equal worth to me, and today I am trying something again that I have suggested to others.

What really matters today? 

Being human today, I have found myself to have been a bit like a robot.  I had one mission: to get out of work early and drive like a crazy man (yes I said crazy) five hours to see my grandmother.  It was what mattered today.  I have had to ask myself what matters so I do not regret things?

While it is not perfect and that there is always the possibility of regret later when we do our hindsight 20-20 analysis,  I think that those in a similar position today--who have a loved one near death or who is critically ill may do better by asking the question:

What matters?

Asking what matters helps us identify the basic and simple priorities.   Numbness does not allow us to do much thinking about details and fine points. Feeling overwhelmed makes one tend to think in concrete terms and extra-tired when we try to figure everything out.   Asking what matters also tells us about our values and helps us feel some sense of clarity

For me, it very much mattered to come and see my grandmother.  Even though she did not like look herself, was confused, and could not say much, seeing her was the right thing to do.  I fulfilled my promise to still hug her 41 years later.  I feel at least some peace because it is what matters in this moment and I believe I can look back on future holidays and take comfort in it.

May you find peace in what matters.