How To Achieve Your Goals: Moving Toward VS Away

How To Achieve Your Goals When You’re Feeling Down: Moving Towards vs Away

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Welcome Back!

Last week we focused on a few key points:

  • Exploring and establishing what your values are is essential for setting good goals.
  • Setting goals that are congruent with your values increase the likelihood that those goals (when achieved) will improve your overall quality of life.
  • Generally speaking, there are 4 basic categories of values, including Love, Work, Play, and Health.

Setting Up Goals: The “Bullseye”

Now that we have covered the importance of exploring values, and setting goals which are congruent with these values, let’s explore the process of setting up goals.

As you may recall from the previous post, I briefly touched on the “bullseye” concept, which illustrated the relationship between living in accordance with one’s values and quality of life :

Values "Bullseye"

Take a moment to consider a few of your most important values, and place an “x” on the Bullseye, indicating how fully you are living by those values.

Here is an example:

VALUES BULLSEYE EXAMPLE
In this example, the hypothetical person values: their marriage (relationships), reading mystery novels (leisure), staying informed about current events (work/education), and stay healthy and fit (personal growth / health).

Did you do it!?

Now that you have a visual representation of the extent to which you are living by your values, you can see areas that might need some work.

In the above example, it appears that this person is doing fairly well within the leisure category (the x is near the center). When it comes to the other 3 categories, however, they certainly have some room for improvement.

This is where GOALS come in.

In short, any planned action that successfully moves you closer to the center of the bullseye (living fully by your values) is a good goal. By creating goals that are aligned with your values, you are far more likely to persevere through difficulty and experience a lasting sense of accomplishment and higher quality of life.

Next Week

Stay tuned for next week, where we will explore specific types of goals, how to map them out, and stay strong when the going gets tough.

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How to Achieve Your Goals: Towards vs Away

Further Reading

Over To You

Are you living fully by your values? Which areas need good goals?

James Voss, MA, LMHCA

james@hellopeacefulmind.com

James is a mental health counselor, specializing in the treatment of anxiety, depression, and substance use related issues. James emphasizes the therapeutic relationship with his clients and uses a wide range of techniques to help reduce distress and foster psychological flexibility.

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