Addiction Recovery is a process. It can take a few weeks or a few months. During your recovery, it is important to stay motivated throughout your time in rehab. Losing motivation can cause you to undo your progress and cause a relapse. In order to stay focused on getting better, it is helpful to set goals for yourself to stay focused on getting healthy. But how do you set achievable goals in recovery?
Setting Achievable Goals in Recovery
Setting goals is part of building a life in recovery. As you transition through addiction treatment programs, you can develop new goals for the short term and the long term.
Make Sure Your Goals Are Achievable
The easiest mistake many of us make when it comes to setting goals is setting goals that aren’t achievable. Goals are supposed to be achievable. There is nothing that says we can’t set extremely high goals and work extremely hard to reach them. Some goals are not reasonably achievable, like, changing people, places or things. We can sometimes change attitudes and circumstances if people choose to change. Otherwise, our goals need to be achievable and reasonable so we can create incremental steps to accomplish those goals. Working with an addiction therapist or a counselor, as well as a mentor or a peer mentor, can help us decide which of our goals are goals and which are fantasies and dreams. We can always chase our dreams and fantasies- we just create a laundry list of goals to get there.
Make Your Goals Personal
Your goals have to have a personal investment in them. Your goals cannot be to change anyone else, but to create a change in yourself that will be iterated throughout the world. When our goals are impersonal we aren’t inspired to achieve them. We can’t set goals that we think we are supposed to have. We have to set goals that we want to achieve- even if we make a goal out of wanting to achieve another goal. For addicts and alcoholics in recovery, that is nowhere more obviously demonstrated in our drinking and using. We found we couldn’t get and stay sober when we did it for other people. We had to be personally connected to our recovery, having a reason and a meaning in our sobriety. Without that connection, we simply had no reason.
Create Commitments to Your Goals
The way we achieve our goals is by staying committed to them. If we set a goal and don’t work toward that goal, the goal will not simply be accomplished on its own or by chance. Each commitment we make and keep toward achieving our goals is an achievement in itself. We are able to recognize that we are committed to a goal and that we are capable of being committed to a goal. Increasingly, we gain confidence in our ability to be self-sufficient and accomplish what we want in life.
Get Addiction Help With Oceanfront Recovery
Remember, your greatest goal takes place every day. Your goal to stay sober, one day at a time, is accomplished every night you go to sleep, clean and sober. The longer you stay sober, the longer you realize you are capable of doing anything you set your mind to. We offer a number of addiction treatment therapies that can help you or your loved one see a life after addiction. These programs include:
- Family Therapy Program
- EMDR Therapy Program
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Program
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy
Oceanfront Recovery wants to help you explore what you’re capable of without drugs and alcohol. Our programs are solution-focused, equipping men in our treatment facility with the skills they need to prosper in their sobriety. For information, call us today at 877.296.7477.
