STORIES FROM OTHERS: How to set goals when you have a chronic illness

I don’t set goals, but I know a lot of people do. When you have a chronic illness, goals can be your enemy — if you don’t learn how to set goals that will work with your illness. I read this blog post and thought it had a lot of great points. I’ve summarized them below.

1. Understand why you’re setting the goal. That will help you have the passion to reach it. Making the goal specific and related to your dreams, hopes, and wants is important, because otherwise you won’t fight for it as hard.
2. Don’t set goals to please others. Chronic illness warriors have enough guilt problems. Making goals for someone else is a recipe for heartache and depression. Life is too short (and too hard) to live for anyone but yourself.
3. Break the goals into pieces. People like us never know how we’re going to feel from day to day. If your goal is a large one, it will be harder to realize. However, if you have benchmarks to hit along the way, even if you don’t make that ultimate goals, you’ve at least made it partway, which should give you a sense of accomplishment.
4. Be ready to let a goal go if necessary. Like I said above, our health is unpredictable. Making a goal that you depend on too much for your happiness could be detrimental. Bitterness and anxiety can set in, and that’s the last thing you want. You need to be prepared to modify your goal if you can’t realize it, while avoiding guilt.

I hope these tips will help those of you who do set goals. Do you have any other ideas? Tell me in the comments!