Getting Started With Achieving Day To Day Goals

[Neil1984]

Hey All

Been trying to achieve this for years. Had a lot of shit happen to me and always lived in denial of it whilst it was going on, most of which consisted of bullying and emotional abuse. Bullied throughout school and spent most of my twenties in an abusive relationship whilst blaming my mental health for my misery. All this has certainly caused me to have a mental health problem though of which I am still struggling.

I finally think I am in a safe space to work on emotional regulation with a therapist. However I am struggling with achieving day to day goals without doing too much or too little and end up giving up and resorting to a series of destructive behaviours such as to much booze and up to three litres of diet coke a day. I then give up on daily activities such as cooking, cleaning, walking my dog ect. Cheers

Neil

[chrisgarrett]

Hi Neil

your topic starter says it all... day to day goals.. Another way you could say this is take one day at a time. Youll find that easier. just set yourself small daily goals something that you can manage without a huge ammount of effort and slowly increase these

good luck buddy and keep strong

[Threemoons]

Hi Neil, welcome to the forums. I'm pleased to meet you! Like Chris said, I also think that the way to go is to cut your daily goals into smaller ones so it doesn't take you too much of an effort to achieve them. It should be easier this way. Cheers and don't forget to give yourself credits for at least trying!

[lonelyheartemma]

Hi Neil, welcome to the forums It's great you've reached the stage of working on day to day goals.

Do you have a therapist atm? If so it might help to talk this through with them as they know you personally.

I would say to keep your goals small to begin with. Even if they seem too small. The whole experience of day to day goals is new to you so it might help to work into it very gradually. As you become more used to it you can increase the number and difficulty of the goals. Most people fail at day to day goals sometimes and they just shrug it off but mental health problems make shrugging things off difficult.

Reward yourself for goals even if they do seem ridiculously small. You still did them.

Have a mix of goals that are useful and goals that are fun.

Try to accept (though it isn't easy) that there will sometimes be days when the goals are impossible. Sometimes it's better to work through the difficulties somehow and get them done anyway but sometimes it's better to leave it for another day. Most people will give themselves a rest from things when they have a physical health problem and sometimes you'll need a rest sometimes because of mental health problems.

I'm not sure what goals you have in mind so this might be irrelevant but some goals rely on other people- and other people don't always get things done when they say they will, which can affect your goal. So it's worth making sure if possible that you have some goals you can achieve without other people. (For example I'm trying to get a book published but my publisher always says "I'll contact you next week" and then I don't hear back for months and by then he's lost the last draft I sent him. There's only a limited amount I can do in this situation.)

I hope this helps a bit.