“Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.” – Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday January 16, 1929 Civil Rights Activist, Nobel Peace Prize 1964

JANUARY

Welcome to another year! You have opened this article for various reasons, possibly out of curiosity, or maybe as part of a class. Hopefully, you are reading this because you are interested in what I have to say, and you are trying to make changes in your life. You may be reading this book because you realize that you have a problem in your life and want help to recover.

FIRST SEASON: You Are Powerful and In Control

I want to assure you that you are NOT powerless over your thoughts, moods or addictions. You make a choice to eat too much, drink too much, use illegal drugs, take too many prescription pills, have irresponsible sex, gamble more than you can afford, wash your hands too much, obsessively pray, excessively shop, or exercise to an extreme. Even feelings such as depression and anxiety are within your control, although you may not yet be aware of how you choose your problems. Many things that are normal and healthy become a problem if done to excess, but you are powerful, and you have the ability within yourself to make changes. For the most part, your life is manageable. You have family, friendships and possibly a relationship. You function in work or school, have hobbies, and pay your bills. Having a problem doesn’t mean that your life is unmanageable. If the truth be known, there is not a person alive who doesn’t have some kind of problem. The fact that you are reading this shows the power and control that you have in your life. You have decided that certain parts of your life need changes and you are managing the changes that you need to make.

GOAL SETTING

January is the official time for looking at your life and setting resolutions or goals to make this year better. We do it every year, and every year those resolutions end up being given up or forgotten almost as quickly as they were made. The problem isn’t that you aren’t able to keep resolutions, you have made more in your life than you realize, but that you don’t know how to set up a plan to follow-through and stay on track.

Many people ask why they should even make a goal. “Life is going along all right,” they tell me. I have heard this from people who were depressed, anxious, addicted to drugs or alcohol, on probation or house arrest, their family and partner want nothing to do with them, and they were recently fired from their job and worried that they will soon be homeless. “Goals are the last thing I need to worry about,” they tell me.

So why do you need goals anyway? You aren’t in such a bad situation.

“My life is going along okay. Besides, I might get run over by a truck and die tomorrow. Can you guarantee that I won’t die tomorrow?”

Of course not, but that question is a tactic, or manipulation to go off track, rather than taking responsibility to improve your life. You might die, but then again, you might live to be a hundred, and without goals, what will you have accomplished in your life?

Image that you are on a ship that capsizes. If you can’t see land, you might start swimming, but most likely you’ll only swim in a large circle and get nowhere. Now suppose that you can see a sliver of land in the distance. Reaching that land will now become your goal. You will start swimming towards the land. There is no guarantee that you will make it. You might become exhausted and drown, or a shark may make you it’s dinner, but you’re better off trying to reach the land than staying in the middle of the ocean going nowhere. You might swim for a while and then see another island closer than the first. In that case, you most likely will change your goal and swim for the closer land.

Goals are never written in concrete, and may be changed as needed. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, had hundreds of failed attempts before he finally succeeded. However, we don’t remember Edison for his failures, which have been forgotten, but for his successes.

You might not accomplish your goal because you don’t know how to establish one, but once you know how, it isn’t hard to set goals and follow through. The key points to goal setting include having a measurable goal and setting a date.

I’d like you to picture your goal, or resolution, as a staircase. You are at the bottom of the stairs, and your goal is on the top step. You can’t do this in one step, but need to climb those steps, one at a time, until you reach the top. Too many of us look at the top step and say, “I can never jump that high. Getting to the top of that is impossible for me. I’ll just give it up.” You are right, no one can jump the height of a flight of stairs, but you don’t have to be able to jump a flight a stairs to reach the top. You only need to lift your foot enough to reach one stair. That, you can do easily. Reaching your goal must be done one step at a time.

The second part is to set a time to achieve your goal. I hear too many people saying, “someday I want to write a book,” or “someday I want to change my bad habit,” but someday never comes. If you want to set a goal, you need to start your plan today. For example, today I will take a step from the floor to the first step. Tomorrow I will step onto the second step. In ten days I will reach the top of the stairs.

I also suggest that you write down your goals to help you stay focused on your plan. It’s far easier to remember your goals if they are written down and kept in a place where you will see them often. I often write my goals in the form of a to-do list that I check as I accomplish each goal. Every time I cross off another item on the list, it’s like giving myself a pat on the back for doing a good job. You might want to try this suggestion, or to establish your own plan instead. I have confidence that you will find your best path towards goal setting. However, whether you actively set goals or not, your life is going to change with time. How much better it is to use a map and plan your route than to just drive around making random turns and getting nowhere.

Here is one more real life example relating to goal setting. Imagine you are building a house. One of the first things you will do before building is to draw a blueprint and floor plan. You wouldn’t even consider building a house without a plan, but what is more important to you, your house or your life?

Your life is far too important to just drift without a plan. Drifting without a plan often leads people into serious problems such as drug addiction, depression, anxiety, psychiatric hospitalization, and incarceration. Making a habit of regularly setting goals for yourself is essential to recovery. Living one day at a time is living only one day away from a relapse, and is an ill-advised long-term recovery plan.

Please understand that everything I suggest will not be exactly right for you. You are free to pick and chose what will work for you, and what won’t. I’ve had people tell me that putting themselves in control didn’t work for them, and they need to give control to another person, an imaginary friend, a pet rock, or to God. I’ve had people who are trying to get over obsessive behaviors tell me that list writing had become an uncontrollable obsession for them. If your goal is to stop writing lists, then please disregard my advice to keep a list. People in early recovery often need to avoid their drug of choice (which isn’t limited to drugs, but rather refers to your specific problem area) just one day at a time, or sometimes one minute at a time. In short, use what works for you, and disregard what doesn’t.

Now, to get back on topic, here are some examples of how to set goals. Remember, a goal must be measurable and have a set time. It must be a positive action. I want to be happy isn’t a goal because there is no way to measure happiness. When people give me this goal, I ask them to define happiness. “I won’t drink” isn’t a goal because it doesn’t say what you WILL be doing. There are lots of things that I won’t do. I will never grow wings and fly to the moon. I won’t swim across the Pacific Ocean, and I won’t be arrested and put in jail for robbing a bank. However, these aren’t goals because I don’t have to make any effort to achieve them. I could achieve these non-goals by staying in bed and sleeping all day. Here are some examples of goals that are measurable, including what you are going to do and when.

Suppose you decide to write a book, this might impress some people, but it shouldn’t. Can you write one page? Most people can. Imagine that you decide to write one page everyday for the next six months. At the end of that time, you’d have written 182 pages, which is a respectable book. Writing a book isn’t very hard, but writing it well is far more difficult. This will take studying, reading about how to write, and feedback from other people who can look at your work with a fresh eye. Still, if you really want to write a book, plan a date to begin. Someday never happens.

Lets look at another goal. For New Years you decide to run a mile every morning. Now, if you are like many people, you aren’t in good enough shape to run a mile. If you try, tomorrow you will be sore and tired, and your New Years resolution (goal) will fade and be forgotten. It’s better to break-up your goal into small achievable parts. You may plan to get up an hour early tomorrow morning. Don’t try running, don’t even plan on walking, just get up and start your day an hour earlier than you are used to. After a week or so, you will become accustomed to getting up early, and the earlier time will become natural for you. Now start walking. For the next week walk a mile. Once you are used to doing that, start running for short periods. Run, walk, run, walk. Gradually increase the amount of time you are running until you are running the full mile daily. This may take weeks, or if you’ve been a major couch potato for a long time, it might take months to achieve. A goal doesn’t happen in one day – it takes time and work. A goal worth doing may take many years (yes, years) to accomplish. If you ever need a brain surgeon, you will want to hire the doctor who was well coordinated and could use his hands well since childhood. You know, the one who could color in the lines from an early age. That reminds me of that old joke where the kid asks a musician how to get to Carnegie Hall and the musician tells the kid “practice, practice, practice.”

When you set your goals, decide what you want to accomplish. Set a date and time when you will work on your goal. Have the goal specific and measurable, such as “do one more sit-up every day until I can do a hundred,” rather than to “get into better shape”. “I will spend Saturday nights playing with my children for two hours” is a goal, while “I won’t go to the bar on Saturday nights” isn’t. Don’t be afraid to stretch your imagination and reach for the sky. If it’s your dream, jump out of an airplane, but don’t take dangerous risks either: use a parachute! Another common expression that I’m sure you’ve heard is: If you fail to plan then you plan to fail.