The future of recovery holds anticipation and unexpected moments. However, when looking towards that future, consider how you live today. The actions and experiences of the present set the ground rules for what the future holds. Identifying your goals for the future helps you move towards a healthier life, making it easier to handle moments and experiences in the present.
In recovery, you start in an unfamiliar environment with an unexpected path laid before you. You may fear the journey. Because you desire to pursue a healthier life, though, the values of yourself and the future are awakened. The value of your future begins with identifying what is most important about you and your life.
Your values inspire the vivid expression of a conscious mindset. When you explore your values and are honest about them, you influence your decisions in the present. Self-discovery ultimately changes your perspective, your self-directed values, and your transition through the recovery phase.
Mistakes are a part of life. When you understand the decisions and intentions behind mistakes, you can recognize how to identify them for the future. Occasionally, there are misjudgments or setbacks along your journey, but there are ways to recognize and learn from them.
Recovery opens doors of opportunity toward recognizing and learning from your mistakes and understanding the value of your self-worth for your future, but how can you make this part of the recovery process easier to handle on a day-to-day basis? Although you do not set out to make mistakes, they can still happen. If you’re looking to have a healthy and successful recovery, understanding the opportunities your mistakes provide at their core can direct you to pursue your future goals.
One fantastic way to make the learning curve of recovery easier to manage is to create short-term and long-term goals. Goals are a direct and indirect visualization of planning, purpose, and energy. When you accomplish a goal, you get a sense of success. You get the additional motivation to reach higher goals than you previously set. You may ask yourself questions about what you want to do with life or what you’re planning to do tomorrow. However, the whole point of setting a goal is to accomplish it. Find what works for you and achieve it.
When choosing your goals during recovery from addiction, you are beginning down an objective-based path to lead you to a healthier life. Focus on what’s important to you by breaking your goals down into smaller steps. These can be your short-term goals of daily, achievable progress. The small steps of short-term goals create a path, also known as a roadmap, to the long-term recovery goal.
As you define your daily objectives for your small steps, you chart the course of the roadmap toward your long-term goal, making both your short-term and long-term goals attainable. Before you create your short-term and long-term goals, identify what is important to you and what is valuable to you. Once you discover your self-identity, you can discover what your day-to-day goals are.
Goals will help you stay away from feeling lost or hopeless through the path of recovery. However, you need to make sure these short-term goals are realistic and achievable. Mark them down as a part of your progress towards your long-term goals.
For example, let’s say you chose a daily goal to eat a nutritious meal for your short-term goal, and your long-term goal is to maintain your nutrition. When lunchtime comes around, you have the choice of eating an unhealthy meal or a nutritious one. Are you going to follow your goal or let the temptation get a hold of you? Choosing a nutritious meal over the other is achievable. Now, it’s just a matter of choosing to accomplish your goal and marking it down as a success.
Once you accomplish your tasks on a day-to-day basis, a few weeks down the road, your body is going to feel healthier and happier. You’ve made the day-to-day decisions to eat a nutritious meal every day, thus leading to the success of your long-term goal of maintaining your nutrition. The same goes for your recovery process. When you make each day a set of achievable goals, the long-term goal of abstinence is possible.
What should you do when you hit your goals? You have already established and succeeded in your goals but may not know where to go from here. When you get to this point in the recovery process, you now understand that your goals influence your behavior and set the ground stones for the future. You have set in motion a renewed value of self-interest and enforced a conscious effort to uphold your long-term goals. When you get to this point, the best thing to do is to create new goals to work towards.
Life is all about goals, accomplishment, and focus. Without those three, there would be no sense of purpose. Therefore, to move towards the future of a healthier lifestyle, you can add new goals every time you accomplish one. If you or someone you care about is suffering from substance use, a long-term goal is to achieve abstinence. However, in recovery, it takes small steps to achieve abstinence, and it may require help from someone who understands substance use challenges. At NorthStar Transitions, we understand the importance of recovery goals. We know how to set a path of small steps to align with long-term future goals. We help our clients decide on goals and understand them, providing a way to help them achieve success in recovery and life. To find out more about the programs and services we provide, reach out to us online, or call us directly at (303) 558-6400.
