“Never lose the opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often…the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.”
-Florence Nightingale

Setting Goals:  Not Just More Items on Your To-Do List.
You might be thinking the subject of goal setting has nothing to do with your pain.  Life is already overwhelming, especially when we are tired, stressed, or in pain. So, if your internal voice says something like I need another thing to do, like I need a hole in my head, that’s understandable.

After a few months working with a coach, a patient summed up goal setting, something like this: “Setting goals means I’m living; not setting goals means I’m dying.” And when you think of it that way, languishing looks a lot like dying. We don’t move, we stop caring about what used to pump us up, don’t communicate well with those we love, and we limit ourselves to thinking about what we can’t do. That’s a bleak existence. 

Here’s the thing that keeps us stuck:  it’s especially easy for a person with a chronic illness to become dependent on doctors and family members to fix their issues. In reality, the only person who can guarantee success in managing your symptoms is YOU.  And, we all make more progress when we have a plan. Setting goals–in small, manageable steps–is essential to success. We can do this by shifting our view from who can help me?  to how can I help myself?

You might have a discouraging history with goal setting or resolutions. But research shows that people who set goals perform better, exhibit increased self-confidence, are happier with their performance, and suffer less stress and anxiety.  

We have all decided to do something, started, stopped, and declared ourselves failures.  When goals are viewed as pass-fail tests, we shun them. If you hope to one day flourish in spite of your symptoms, it may be helpful to reframe goal-setting as a familiarization process. What we refuse to consider or look at cannot help us. Goal setting expands our horizon.

How Do I Set Goals Without Setting Myself Up for More Failure?
Our goals will pull us forward if they fit our identity—what we believe about ourselves.  If I were an avid quilter, but because of my symptoms, I haven’t touched my sewing machine for 2 years, I may no longer identify with being a quilter. To set a goal of constructing a king-sized quilt in 90 days does not fit who I believe I am. James Clear suggests we think of small actions as “votes” for who we are. If you want to return to being a quilter, setting up a system to feed that identity can increase your success. In the beginning, setting a goal of merely showing up at your machine regularly, and doing so, will cast a vote in favor of the quilter—rebuilding the belief that you are a quilter. Learning effective strategies can help us avoid this failure-oriented repetition. This is a variation on the S-M-A-R-T way to set goals:

What Triggers the Pursuit of a Goal?
Heidi Grant Halverson, PhD, says that things in our environment serve as prompts and reminders of what we want to do. Healthy snacks in the cupboard can remind us to stick with our nutritional goals. A picture of a garden might motivate us to plan our own and order seeds. Driving past a gym can stimulate our resolve to start an exercise regimen. Touching a piece of fabric can rekindle our passion for quilting. An “X” marked on every day of the calendar we show up to pursue our goal is a well-documented tactic for keeping us on track. 

Remarkably, the goals of people we don’t even know can be goal triggers. Psychologists have referred to this as goal contagion—because at an unconscious level, we automatically adopt and pursue a goal that is implied by another person’s successful behavior. Advertisers use this principle when they show us beautiful people using beauty products and happy kids eating certain foods.

Boost Your Success 

• Become aware of what you say to yourself internally about yourself and your intentions.
• Ask yourself how well this goal fits what you believe about yourself.  Do you need to work for a while to re-establish the identity you desire (small actions that are a “yes” vote)?
• Utilize triggers (reminders) in your environment to spur goal setting.
• Feel free to fail and start over again.  Failing is just a signal that your goal needs revision so it’s more realistic.  
• Be honest about how important this goal is to you.  If it’s low in importance, you will focus on things that mean more to you than the goal.
• Ask yourself how ready you are to start, engage, and make it to the finish line of this goal.  
• Gauge your confidence in reaching your goal.  If you immediately jump to your fear of failure, your confidence is low.  Review the benefits of achieving the goal, and identify barriers to reaching it (naming them can help you identify solutions and workarounds).
• Work with a coach on goal setting.  Accountability to another person often helps us stay the course long enough to generate success.  Even small successes spur us to stick with it.  And successfully sticking with something for several days or weeks helps to create a pattern we’ll miss if we stop it.
• When nearing the completion of a goal, set another so you don’t experience a “stop” in your progress.

Effects of setting goals on the brain…

Set a goal, and your brain believes it is part of who you are. If the goal is essentially who you are (especially if it fits your strengths and values well), your brain will round up the necessary resources to make it happen —just like it recruits your knowledge and memories to answer questions on an exam. Because the brain treats not achieving a goal as a loss, we experience tension until a goal is achieved, and damaged self-esteem when we don’t accomplish what we set out to. Practice framing your partial successes in positive terms:  if your goal was to walk three times this week, and you walked only once, you have not failed; you completed 33% of your goal. And you’ve likely done 100% more than you were doing.