CHAPTER
5

Setting Goals for Getting Better

In This Chapter

• Breaking down a goal into manageable steps
• Using goals to help achieve desired behaviors
• Thinking about pros and cons when making choices
• Committing to change

When you picked up this book, what did you have in mind? Do you know what you want to change? You might have depression, anxiety, or anger issues and want to work directly on those. You might have a bad habit of smoking or eating too much. You might not be sure what is going on and feel overwhelmed by situations in your life.

Whatever the case, you know something needs to change. You might not know where you want to end up, but you know you want to feel better. This chapter is about getting from where you are to feeling better. You’ll learn how to set goals and how to develop a plan of action.

Setting Goals

Before you can work on improving specific areas of your life, you need to have a goal. Goals should be specific, measurable, and achievable. They should have a time limit and should be stated as positive action—what you want to do rather than what you don’t want to do.

STOP AND THINK

You can create goals based on how you want to behave or how you want to feel. When creating goals about feelings, focus on having positive emotions such as happiness, hopefulness, and pride. If you currently experience strong negative emotions, aim toward a less intense reaction: for example, moving from rage to annoyance.

Let’s walk through the process of determining and setting a goal with an example. When you created your emotion log, you might have noticed that you become angry easily. You noticed that whenever someone corrects you or gives you feedback you view as negative, you react defensively. Your emotion log might look like this:

As you look over your chart, you see that whenever someone gives you feedback, you feel it is criticism and become angry and irritated. You want to change how you react when other people give you feedback. Because you want your goal to be specific, ask yourself:

• How do I want feel during these encounters?
• How do I want to come across? Open or closed? Flexible or rigid?
• How would I like to behave during these encounters?
• If I’d had a different reaction, how would I see the situation going?
• If I did not get upset so easily, what parts of my life would be improved?

CBTIDBIT

When choosing initial goals, think about which behaviors have the most negative impact on your life and which are most likely to impact other problem behaviors. If you change the first behavior in a chain of behaviors, making one change can result in modifying several behaviors.

Decide how you want to feel and act in this type of situation. You might say:

“I want to feel confident that I can handle feedback from other people. I want to act in a pleasant manner to the people around me.”

Using the list in Chapter 2, think about which problematic thought processes you are using. In this example, you are ignoring the positive.

Now you’re ready to create a goal:

“When someone criticizes me or gives me feedback, I will first thank them for their feedback. I will then later decide if their feedback is relevant.”

You can also create a coping statement, one that you can turn to whenever you begin to feel irritated because someone is giving you feedback. Your coping statement might be:

“It is not a reflection of me as a person. I get plenty of positive feedback.”

If you’re having a difficult time determining your goals, imagine how your goal would look. Try to put that image into words. What would it look like to be less angry or less depressed? What would it look like to be happy? How would you feel about yourself? How would you relate differently to the people around you? What would you be thinking about?

STOP AND THINK

If you are having trouble reaching your goals, it might be because your current goals are too general. Try being more specific or break down your goals into smaller goals and take one step at a time.

Your Turn: Ladder Rungs

When creating goals, it’s easy to be too ambitious. You’re eager to make changes in your life and want jump right to the end result. However, unless you create the steps necessary to get there, it will be hard to meet your goal.

In the previous example, your goal was, “When someone criticizes me or gives me feedback, I will first thank them for their feedback. I will then later decide if their feedback is relevant.” This is your end result goal, but isn’t necessarily where you need to start.

Goals work best when you create a series of steps, with each step moving you closer to the end result. Think of these steps like rungs on a ladder: you must step on each one before moving on to the next. Begin with the most negative extremes. Think about your past actions, list times you reacted poorly to other’s feedback. What was your worst reaction? This is your starting point—the first rung on your ladder.

CBTIDBIT

Limit your goals to improving one behavior at a time. You want to focus on one key behavior, such as quitting smoking or losing 10 pounds, rather than monitoring all of the different elements of your health at the same time. Once you accomplish one goal, you can move on to focus on a different area.

Continue to list more moderate behaviors, working your way toward your desired behavior. Each of these reactions becomes a rung on the ladder. Each becomes a goal. The ladder of goals helps you monitor your progress and helps you feel a sense of accomplishment as you move up the rungs.

Define Your Motivation

Everyone knows that change isn’t easy. Even when the results are negative, you might fall back to what is comfortable or remain stuck in old habits. When this happens, don’t become discouraged. With focus, determination, and the right goals, you can achieve the results you seek.

Suppose you suffer from panic attacks. You dread the dizzy, nauseous, fear-filled feeling when you are in a crowd, so you avoid them. You avoid going in to the city, don’t eat in restaurants, and don’t go to the mall.

This strategy has paid off—as long as you stay home or go to only selected activities, you avoid the unpleasant feeling of having a panic attack. But this strategy is limiting your life. Your friends enjoy going out for an evening in the city while you stay home. You limit where you work to small companies with only a few employees. You have chosen to compromise your lifestyle in order to avoid having a panic attack.

Think about what your life would be like if you didn’t worry about having a panic attack. Where would you go? What type of work would you do? Create an image of what you want. This is your end goal. This is the top rung of your ladder. It is also the beginning of developing motivation to change. The more you develop this image, the more you want to achieve it.

GIVE IT A TRY

Think about broad goals, such as family, relationships, or work. Write down three issues you want to work on and list the pros and cons of working on each goal.

Weighing the Pros and Cons

Without realizing it, you have weighed the costs and the benefits of going to certain places and determined that the cost (a panic attack) is more than you are willing to pay, no matter what the benefit. To change your thoughts, you need to reevaluate the costs and benefits.

A cost-benefit analysis is a tool for weighing the pros and cons of making a change. To get a complete picture, you might want to do two cost-benefit analyses, one for continuing your present behavior and one for changing. Using our previous example, the cost-benefit analysis for using CBT to overcome panic attacks might look like this:

Pros

• I will learn to go out in public without having a panic attack.
• I can try new restaurants.
• I can join my friends when they go out to the city.
• I can look for a better-paying job.
• I can look for a job I like better.

Cons

• I will have to face having a panic attack.
• I will have to face my fears and start going out.
• It will be scary and uncomfortable.

You can use a cost-benefit analysis to show the benefits and disadvantages of just about any decision. It may also help to break down your big decisions into smaller decisions. For example, if you have a panic disorder and it’s too overwhelming to think about changing all of your social habits, you might look at changing just one. Imagine you have been avoiding work because of your disorder. Think about the pros and cons of changing just that behavior.

Pros of Staying Home from Work

• I can relax at home.
• I don’t need to worry about having a panic attack at work.
• Other people won’t think I am crazy.
• I don’t need to worry about going out of the house.

Cons of Staying Home from Work

• I like having an income and feeling independent.
• I enjoy seeing my co-workers.
• I enjoy the freedom of being out of the house.
• Going to work gives me opportunities like trying new restaurants or meeting friends after work.

IMAGINE THAT

Cost-benefit analysis can be used in many areas of your life, including behaviors, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and problem solving. You can modify your analysis to look at short-term or long-term solutions. It works best if you write statements in pairs: What is an advantage of making a change? How would that translate to a disadvantage of not making the change?

Be sure to list all of the pros and cons that come to mind. With the cost-benefit analysis, you easily see both sides of an argument and are able to make an informed and rational decision.

Positive vs. Negative Motivation

There are two types of motivation: positive and negative. Positive motivation tends to be more successful because you are working toward something pleasurable. Negative motivation is doing something to avoid pain.

Imagine two people: one goes to work because he doesn’t want to get fired and risk losing his home. Another person has the same job and although he doesn’t want to get fired, he goes to work because he wants to feel a sense of pride, independence, and financial stability. The first is negatively motivated; the second is motivated in a positive way.

Negative motivation works but rarely leaves you with a sense of satisfaction and well-being. Positive motivation provides an inner force, a reason to keep going. It is looking at what you want rather than what you don’t want. Consider your reason for wanting to change; is it framed in a positive or negative way? Sometimes it is a matter of changing the wording:

Negative: I want to change because I don’t want to be left behind when my friends go out.

Positive: I want to change because I enjoy spending time with my friends.

Although the statements are similar, notice how one is framed around avoiding a situation (being left behind) while the other is framed around an enjoyable outcome (spending time with my friends.) Your goals, or rewards, can be tangible—a new car—or intangible—enjoyment, respect, happiness. When creating goals, ask yourself, “What do I have to gain?” rather than, “What am I going to lose if I don’t do this?”

Your Turn: Create a Cost-Benefit Analysis

Create your own cost-benefit analysis on a current problem you have. Take a piece of paper and fold it in half to create two columns. Label the columns “Costs/Disadvantages” and “Benefits/Advantages.” Write down all of the costs and benefits you can think of, no matter how small. Weigh them out against one another to see which option brings the most benefit.

Continue with the cost-benefit, creating one for short-term and long-term pros and cons. Be sure to write the pros as a positive, not as avoiding a negative. This tool is used to determine your personal risk and how both changing, and not changing, impacts your life. Use the positives to help keep you motivated to change.

Your Turn: Create Coping Flash Cards

In a previous exercise, you created a ladder with steps to reach your goal. You are going to focus on one rung of the ladder at a time to keep moving forward to reaching your desired behavior. As you begin to work on each rung, create coping flash cards. These are small cards, such as index cards, that you carry with you to remind you of a positive statement to help you deal with a stressful situation.

To create your coping flash cards, first list every negative thought that may interfere with you completing the goal you are working on. Write one negative thought on each index card. Then turn the card over and write the opposite, positive, and realistic thought to replace the negative thought.

When you notice yourself thinking (or saying) the negative thought, pull out the corresponding card and read the positive alternative you wrote down. Try reading it aloud and repeating it several times.

Maintaining Your Progress

Reaching your goal takes commitment but it doesn’t end there. You need to be committed to maintaining the progress you make. This commitment is a promise you make to yourself to make positive changes in your life and to continue using the skills you learn in this book to maintain those changes.

The three levels of commitment:

Mental commitment: A promise you make to yourself. This is the beginning point. Mental commitments alone are easy to break.

Commitment made in writing: A higher level of commitment. When you write a commitment down, you are more likely to keep the promise.

Commitment made by telling others: When you share your goal with at least one other person, you strengthen your resolve to keep your commitment. When sharing your goals, be sure it is someone who will provide positive support and encouragement.

In the beginning, you might not feel comfortable sharing your goals with someone else. You should at least write down your commitment and place it somewhere you will see it on a daily basis. This helps reinforce your goal and your motivation to reach the goal.

The Least You Need to Know

• Goals should be specific, measurable, and achievable.
• Positive motivation is more effective than negative motivation.
• Creating a cost-benefit analysis gives you information to make a rational decision.
• When you write down a goal, you are more likely to follow through.