New Year, new Goals: How to cultivate a process of change throughout the year

2018: New Year, New Appreciations. Let's reflect on all the beauty of our past year.

For me, the end of the year is a time of reflection, appreciation and gratitude. It's when I carve out time to be proud of myself and my accomplishments of the year. It's when family rejoins, and tradition and ritual come to a focus. During this process of reflection, I find it natural to reflect on areas for growth, development and change.

However, over the years as I've progressed through my experience as a certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, CBT therapist in West LA, I've noticed difficulty in executing some of the New Year's goals I set for myself. I know I am not alone in this. Much has been written about the importance of setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) goals. In thinking about my past goals and in remembering discussions with friends and family, identifying goals is rarely the main barrier.

Too often I think our year-end reflections get filtered through a negative filter. Instead of dwelling on my accomplishments and successes, I tend to set goals that tap into my perceived inadequacies and dissatisfactions over the past year. Sadly, the outcome of this type of filtration is that I leave myself with a sense that I am, and/or my life, just isn't good enough.

Goals of this nature can become a checklist of tasks I "need" to or "must" do, and become a basis for my own feelings of inadequacy, lack of confidence and esteem, and tend to gain momentum throughout the year. Conducted through this lens, in the generation of goals, I struggle to finalize a thorough list of SMART goals and commit to executing them.

So much inspiration to be found in Los Angeles, CA.

If you are someone who is able to carve out SMART goals for yourself, hold yourself accountable throughout the year and move forward in creating your ideal self and environment without distress, BRAVO! Keep up the excellent work! 

However, if you find yourself struggling to set SMART goals or executing change within your life, I have a proposal for you.

In a prior post, I recommended:

We all drift from our good-enough selves. Being adaptable, resilient and committing time to reconnecting with our passions, purpose and cultivating a process to do so is most important.

Similar to the above quote, it is important to remember that we all drift from our true intentions and goals -- each and every one of us. Therefore, it is not helpful to berate ourselves for this sort of drift.

It has been much more helpful to think about the times in my life when I have lived according to my desired goals -- going to the gym on a regular basis, cultivating meaningful relationships, treating loved ones in a loving, compassionate manner -- and reflecting on how I was feeling at those times, what I was thinking in those moments and factors that led to drifting away from those ideal behaviors.

Typically, I find that when I cultivate such compassion for myself, I'm in a much better position to share compassion and nurturance with the world and others.

If you are interested in working on your goals in 2018 and think a therapist might be helpful in keeping you on track, please contact my West Los Angeles psychotherapy practice today for a consultation.

#goals #newyear #change #psychology #inspire #reflection