Steps to reaching goals:
1. Identify your New Year’s resolution or goal.
2. Create a plan that helps you overcome barriers, laziness, and not doing it.
3. Do it daily until you have reached your goal.
4. If you stop making progress, start again.
Sometimes doing it in groups is helpful.
Why aren’t you happy yet?
Originally published in the Record Eagle by Joseph R. Sanok
Can you believe it’s over?
I’m not sure what your “it” is, but it is probably over. The build up to Christmas, family celebrations and the whole month of December is quite pronounced in my mind. With 2014 around the corner, most writers are talking about your goals. I think they miss the point.
Goals are fine, but there is a flawed mentality that accompanies most goal-setting. This is the typical formula: I am not happy with (insert something here) so I will change that by doing (insert goal here) I will then be happier.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. It’s based on a marketing formula that is meant to create the need for more, rather than contentment.
“I will be happy when I …”
In our society, marketing continually has us ask the question, “Are you happy?” Usually the seller is creating an appetite that we didn’t know existed. At the core we’re saying that we are not fine how we are. Instead, happiness is something that will be acquired once something happens that is outside of us. If this is true, we’re in for some trouble because we have very little control over things outside of us.
Instead, something else usually happens
In my counseling practice, I often see folks who reach their goals and still are unhappy. What happened? They thought that the unhappiness was coming from their weight, their smoking, their parenting, or from their spouse, but now that source has changed and nothing feels better.
The identified “source” of the pain or unhappiness is misplaced. Instead, those manifestations of unhappiness are eliminated and replaced by new sources of pain. So what’s the real source?
It’s much, much deeper
Acceptance of oneself, exactly how you are is counter-intuitive. What if I never reach a goal again? What if I get lazy? What if I …? When we are able to see ourselves as deserving humans that still have flaws and need improvement, but that we are loved how we are, that is where freedom starts. As well, genuine contentment comes from accepting our life situation and still deciding to be happy.
Instead of asking “Why am I unhappy?” maybe we should ask, “Why am I unaccepting?” What if you never lost another pound? What if your hardest efforts produced zero outcomes? Of course you would be disappointed in yourself, but how would you learn to still be happy?
Let’s focus less on goals that will lead to happiness, but instead focus on contentment that will bring happiness in any situation as we enter 2014.
Learn more, read other articles about family, goal-setting, and clinical issues: read more articles
Does that help? How would you have answered this question? Will you let me know via voice mail? https://www.speakpipe.com/PracticeofthePractice
Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC is a licensed counselor and owner of Mental Wellness Counseling in Traverse City, MI. Email me, I’d love to talk [email protected]
To link to Joe’s Google+ follow the link.
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Thanks for the photo Draco208
