Mental illness can have a devastating impact on a person’s dreams and goals. How can your vision for your life be retrieved and made achievable? In this episode, Helen and Valerie demonstrate the goal-setting methods and skills that worked for them as they fought their way back from illness into recovery.
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Goal Setting : A Necessity for Recovery
Episode 8
Helen Sneed: Welcome to Mental Health, Hope and Recovery. I'm Helen Sneed.
Valerie Milburn: And I'm Valerie Milburn.
Helen Sneed: We both have fought and overcome severe chronic mental illnesses. Our podcast offers a unique approach to mental health conditions. We use practical skills and inspirational stories of recovery. Our experience is up close and personal.
Valerie Milburn: Helen and I are your peers. We're not doctors, therapists or social workers. We're not professionals. But we are experts. We are experts through our own lived experience with multiple mental health diagnoses and symptoms. Please join us on our journey.
Helen Sneed: We live in recovery, so can you welcome to episode nine, Goal Setting, A necessity for recovery. Everyone has or has had a dream or vision for their life. It can be work or school, relationships, personal improvement, many things. But a person with a mental health condition can become so caught up in the sheer act of survival that a vision or goal seems impossible. For someone who's feeling a little better, a goal can seem like the beginning of a whole new life. And most of us battling mental illness are somewhere in between. In this episode, we're going to examine the topic of goals and goal setting and what to do when you get stuck. I don't know about you, but paralysis, overwhelm, fear, frustration, procrastination all can get in my way.
Valerie Milburn: Yeah, for me, procrastination is often what gets in my way. There's a definition of procrastination that I like. Procrastination is a conscious decision to live in pain.
Helen Sneed: Oh dear.
Valerie Milburn: But let's get back to our topic today of goals. I have a definition of that, too. The dictionary says a goal is the object of a person's ambition or effort. An aim or desired result. And Napoleon Hill defines a goal as. A goal is a dream with a deadline. And I really like that definition because it's so true. A goal is a dream with a deadline. You start with a dream or a vision for yourself. The great question is how to achieve it, how to get there, especially when there can be so many boulders in your path. I mean, trial and error teach us that goals must be broken down into small, achievable steps. And we're going to talk about that today. The way we deal with goals. Goals is to convert them into a manageable plan. And you know, just never worry about the size because no goal is insignificant if it can lead to a more. If it can lead to more self management and if it's a step toward a larger vision for yourself. I really like what Martin Luther King said. He said, you don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
Helen Sneed: Well, today we want to talk about goal setting and how it is crucial to recovery from a mental health condition. We believe that any goal can lead to a better self image and produce a more satisfying life. Achieving manageable goals can be the defining milestones along the road to a life in recovery.
Helen Sneed: First, we'll tell you about our own experiences with goals before, during and after we dealt with mental illnesses. We'll also examine goal setting techniques and methods and look at some indispensable skills to help stay on track even when slipping back, even on those days when it seems impossible. Believe me, we've been there.
Valerie Milburn: Definitely slipping back. But you know, I was always goal oriented from very early on. I actually remember some of my elementary school goals. I remember setting a goal to get every girl Scout badge possible. And I did. I once set a goal to sell X number of boxes of girl Scout cookies. And I did. I once set a goal to read every Little House on the Prairie book over the summer. And I even did that. This took some doing because I had to ride my bike to the bookmobile when it came to my neighborhood once a week.
Helen Sneed: Valerie, you were sort of like a little executive child, like the CEO of your life or something. Were you aware of feeling that you were different?
Valerie Milburn: A little bit. I was very focused and I knew I was a standout in my class because I was, I was a straight A student. I felt like things came easier to me than others. I could see others struggling and I was just kind of doing most things pretty easily and I was just super focused. And this goal setting, this hyper focused behavior followed me into high school and college. I Set a goal to graduate from high school in three and a half years and get into the University of Texas. And I did that. And I graduated from the University of Texas having paid every dime of tuition, books, and all my living expenses, expenses by myself. And I next planned to focus only on my career because after a bad relationship in college, I had no desire for a relationship. I used to say, I'll get married when I'm 30. But this wonderful man walked into my life when I was 22, and I married him when I was 23. Had my first child at 24. And I never saw this coming, but it seemed like the most natural thing to do because it was the perfect thing to do. And then my goal became career and family.
Helen Sneed: I noticed that you used the word perfect thing to do, which I'm always suspicious of that word. But what you did, it looks to me as if you just doubled your goal in size overnight.
Valerie Milburn: I did, and I maintained for a long time with that goal of career and family. And that making and meeting goals was in my fiber. And that's what was so devastating about my mental illness hijacking my life. I lost my career. Those career goals I had set and worked so hard for were just trashed. I also almost lost my family and in fact, couldn't live at home for a while. And that pain of being away from my family was crippling.
Helen Sneed: I just don't see how you were able to move at all.
Valerie Milburn: Some days it felt that way, that I would not be able to dysfunction. I. I had lost my compass. I used to repeat a refrain from a Lyle Levitt song at night when I was in bed, when I was looking back on my day. And the refrain is, it's just a fact of life. No one cares to mention. She wasn't good, but she had good intentions. I did have good intentions, but no follow through. I mean, I couldn't even set a goal, much less follow through on one. I was just trying to get through the day. I mean, some days I was trying to live responsibly, but most days, in the depths of my mental health crisis, I was literally just trying to stay alive, just really trying not to kill myself.
Helen Sneed: Well, I guess you could say that's the biggest goal there is.
Valerie Milburn: Yeah, we talked about that in our last episode when we were talking about suicidal ideation and suicidal thinking, and it was really a struggle. Deep, deep struggle. Now, Helen, I know you and I have a lot in common from our childhoods. And were you a goal setter?
Helen Sneed: Oh, darling, I was ambitious. From birth. I had big dreams for myself in my childhood because achievement was the only antidote
Helen Sneed: I could come up with for my depression. I didn't know that's what it was, but I just felt so awful all the time and I had such a terrible opinion of myself. And I wrote and starred in my first play when I was nine. But I was never taught process. So I was stuck with these big dreams and no idea how to go after them. By high school and throughout college, I had set this huge goal. I was going to be a great actor, but all I knew was to overachieve in school. So once I graduated, I was lost and clueless and went into a two year depression. Without the structure of school, I dropped into total paralysis.
Valerie Milburn: That constant overachieving was for me, something that kept me focused. So do you think the loss of school and the accolades that came with overachieving was also a cause for the depression?
Helen Sneed: Oh, absolutely, because I just again needed a structure imposed on me and I needed a lot of positive feedback because my self opinion was so low. And another thing is my personal goals were out of sync with the standards of the time. One of the few goals society had for me was to be good looking and docile enough to marry well. And that was something I couldn't see myself doing. I mean, I wanted to become a great star. So somehow I was able to move to New York City where I only knew one person and I didn't like her.
Valerie Milburn: That's funny, but it's not. But it's so brave that you moved to New York City. How old were you when you moved to New York?
Helen Sneed: I think I was 22. And that's the best time to do it. When you're just so young and green, you have no idea what you're up against. So it wasn't even hard. Well, it was, but it was great. And I did. I built a life there and I led. You know, I've talked about leading a double life, which I did successfully with a host of friends, but I never set a course or had a plan for an acting career. However, I did write a musical with a friend that was very hot and almost made it to Broadway, but it didn't. And rather than continuing to pursue my passion, which was writing, I took increasingly high profile positions in the theater because that's what came my way and gradually had real success. But even then there was no plan. This inability to set goals created a curious kind of passivity. I didn't really take charge of my life. Latham and Locke said In positive psychology, every person's life depends on the process of choosing goals to pursue. If you remain passive, you are not going to thrive as a human being. My life was always a huge disappointment to me. No success could compensate for my self loathing and the illnesses that plagued me. So I was always driven and became an incurable workaholic and ran myself into the ground again and again. I was nearing the top of my field and had been made an executive at a global entertainment corporation when I changed doctors. This new doctor said that she was afraid that I would kill myself if I didn't quit my job and go into full time treatment. Well, reluctantly I did. And that was the beginning of the end for me. Work had always saved me in the past.
Valerie Milburn: Well, that's another example, like overachieving in school, of having something that kept both of us focused because for both of us, being workaholics gave us a reason to keep going despite how desperately our illnesses wanted us, wanted to take us out.
Helen Sneed: Yeah, it was a, it, it worked for me for a long time. Being a, being a workaholic and, and never stopping. But I got into, I went overnight from being a, you know, a successful person in the theater to, to being a full time mental patient. And it was, it was, it was the antithesis of what I needed. There was no real plan beyond reducing the PTSD trauma cycles. Well, that's kind of vague, you know, there was no schedule, no goals, no defined steps, no assessment of progress. And as a result, I lost everything. I became completely incapacitated. You know, as I've said before, Valerie, I couldn't even dress myself or leave my bedroom. And I also developed severe, dangerous symptoms that I never had before and they just kept accelerating. But nothing tormented me more than the memories of the goals and dreams I'd had for myself. Even now I feel a deep, deep, profound grief for my lost years. I want my years back. And of course, nobody gets that.
Valerie Milburn: No, we don't.
Helen Sneed: I wish. And then
Helen Sneed: I also have to still fight a sense of shame that I didn't take better care of my dreams and whatever abilities I might have had for achieving them. But.
Valerie Milburn: The shame is deep seated. And though we've both worked really hard on definitely rears its ugly head for me. I mean, I've let go of most of it, but I had to let go of it to heal. And reminding myself that mental illness is a medical illness and that it's not my fault helps me with the shame. I try to think about it this way and it really does Help that I would not be ashamed if I had cancer, there would still be grief. There'd still be grief and sadness, but not shame.
Helen Sneed: You're right. Well, tell me something. I'm curious. Besides dealing with the shame, how did you use goals to begin to heal?
Valerie Milburn: They were so necessary. I had to start taking little steps toward recovery. And as I fought my way out of my mental health crisis, I learned to set these little stepping stones to realistic goals. And my sister helped me with this. When I was at my sickest, she would call me and ask me if I had gotten out of bed yet that day, many days I hadn't. And she would ask me if I could get out of bed and walk around the block and then call her back. Now I could handle that small walk around the block. And I would do it and I would call her back. Then she would say, can you take a shower? Now these were realistic goals. And over time I was able to set these small goals for myself. And then I was able to set daily goals to stay in recovery. Like daily take a shower, daily wash my hair, daily put on my makeup. Small self care goals. We talked about these daily wellness plans early on in this podcast, Helen, when you and I told our stories right? And those are really important things to focus on, our daily wellness plans, I had to learn this self care. And I learned it by wrapping myself up with patience, love and tolerance. And something that was really important was accepting my limitations. And that may sound negative, but while I accepted my limitations, I also learned to admire what I did do well. And that was a, a self honesty that I needed to be realistic. And I found that as long as I am honest with myself and ask my higher power to guide me, I can maintain this rewarding life of recovery that I've worked for and built.
Helen Sneed: Well, besides the honesty, what else have you worked on that helps you with achieving your goals?
Valerie Milburn: Acceptance. Just acceptance in general about what I can and can't do and not having that shame with what my limitations are because there is so much I can do and that is the key to setting realistic goals. And the other part of that, like I said, not just the limitations, but learning to admire what I do well is key. And I say specifically the strengths God has given me, I, I laugh because God gave me an intelligent brain. Now my brain doesn't have enough dopamine or epinephrine or serotonin, and thus I have a mood disorder, but it's an intelligent brain. So that's what I look at, what I.
Helen Sneed: That's what you got, that's what you got.
Valerie Milburn: That's what I got. It's, it's a smart brain missing a little bit, but it's smart. So now I focus on what I do now, and I try not to compare it to that standard I set before I was waylaid by my mental illness. And I have this wonderful psychiatrist that was with us on episode in episode three. And he tells a funny story about my standard of success. I was in his office lamenting one time about how I am was just a failure because I was not going to achieve the goals I had said in my late 20s and early 30s because I crashed at age 34. And he said, wait a minute. I knew you when you were a success. You weren't a success when you were a success, you are a success now. And I have learned to accept that most of the
Valerie Milburn: time. I know that what I'm doing now, doing the best I can now, is indeed of value.
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Valerie Milburn: So Helen, that's how I started setting goals. And I know you had your own path. How did you start with your goal setting? Well.
Helen Sneed: Goal setting like recovery kind of snuck up on me, although I didn't know it at the time because I was so clueless. Dbt, the dialectical behavior therapy that I'm always raving about, taught me the first tips I'd ever known about setting goals. Well, I wasn't able to apply it for a long time, but I finally came to see that I might be able to learn. Another help was the advice from a group leader in response to my inability to exercise. I was at a point where I simply was not functioning and all these little small goals I had were simply too big. I really wanted to exercise, but I wasn't. And she said, helen, a five minute walk is all you have to do just five minutes. Can you do that? And you know, the goal had to be that simple for me to achieve it. And I did. I did the five minute walking.
Valerie Milburn: That's like my sister asking me if I could walk around the block. We both needed simple, measurable goals.
Helen Sneed: Yes. And really. And for me, really tiny because I just. Anything else overwhelmed me. Another thing that I learned from a DBT therapist is that she taught us there are three objectives to a goal. So let's say your goal is you want to buy a bottle of water. So there's three possible outcomes. Number one, to achieve the conscious goal, to buy the bottle of water, you're thirsty, you really need that water. Or number two, to maintain the relationship with the person selling the water. That relationship is the most important thing to you. Or number three, to maintain your self respect. So that means if the person is rude or abusive or whatever, you can just walk out with your self respect intact. Now, this strategy had a huge impact on me. It was the first method I'd been taught about goals.
Valerie Milburn: I love this. It's so interesting. And until you and I discussed it the other day, I had never even heard of it.
Helen Sneed: Well, I still use it sometimes, but I just can remember it was again, it was like the parting of the red seas, you know, all of a sudden, I saw something I'd never seen before. So as I said, I had to start with self care, which is kind of what you did, because I couldn't take care of myself. And that's where I set early goals. And one thing that I had to learn to do, and I did, was to respect small achievements rather than the huge ones which I had always thought were the only ones that mattered. So I began to structure small goals of short time to do just one task in my apartment because I couldn't make myself go out yet. So returning one phone call or email, getting my mail regularly, and then I would go out and do the walking for five minutes. And then it became things that were bigger, like getting myself to therapy instead of phoning it in. But one of the things that was the most striking is that my eating disorders were off the charts. I mean, they were just completely out of control. And one day I took down two diet books and combined their list of allowable foods. And I sat with this list and finally decided I could live with eating those things. Only that led to one of my most difficult
Helen Sneed: goals achieved. My eating became healthy, and I lost the 70 pounds I had gained.
Valerie Milburn: What an accomplishment.
Helen Sneed: Yeah, it was fabulous. But I treated the weight loss like a small goal to be achieved daily. I didn't weigh myself or count calories. I focused only on eating the foods on my list. That was the most I could do. And it worked, thank God. And years later, I still have that list and I still use it because. Because keeping it small worked. And with this, unbeknownst to me, I had created and achieved a smart goal. Now, Valerie, this is a methodology, the smart goal that. Can you tell us more about them and what it means?
Valerie Milburn: I can. I love to talk talk about smart goals. There's a widely used effective goal setting, goal setting technique and it is called a smart goal. Helen, you and I have both found it to be a life saving, yes, indeed, strategy. And I use it not just when I'm completely blocked and need to get going, but also when I'm excited about a big project, want to tackle it, and need to break it down into manageable steps. So smart stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. And right now we're going to focus on specific, measurable and timely because those three things, specific, measurable, and timely, are great starting points. So now let's make a smart goal. Let's all think of a goal that's something you want for yourself, not what others want for you. So, Helen, what's a goal you're working with?
Helen Sneed: Well, as usual, I have a huge one. I want to finish the book I'm writing and I've had big problems with writer's block since the pandemic began. If I sit at my computer, I will begin to work. But right now I can't even make myself go into my office. So what about you, Valerie? What's the goal that you're pursuing right now?
Valerie Milburn: Well, everyone probably heard of snow vid, the big freeze that hit Texas and many parts of the country. Well, it wiped out several large portions of bushes, hedges in my yard. So I still have a couple of hedges and many things that are dead from the freeze. And I'm overwhelmed by what needs to be done in my yard. So my goal is to finish replacing the dead hedges. Bushes in my yard really needs to be broken down. I'm overwhelmed. Okay, all right.
Helen Sneed: So let's look at the mechanics of setting up a smart goal. It's really not very hard. It's just a question of sort of reducing and reducing what you need to do. So ask yourself these questions about your goal. Is it specific? Now this is a what question? For example, answer emails or go to yoga or clean the house. Is it Measurable. This is a how much question. There must be a number in your goal. So let's say two times and is it timely? This is a win question. We want to choose something that we can accomplish in a short amount of time so we won't become overwhelmed. So let's make it 30 minutes. That's a manageable commitment.
Valerie Milburn: Okay.
Helen Sneed: The basic sentence is, I will what? For how much by and for when. So here's one of them, which would be I will answer emails twice a day for one week. I will what? Answer emails for how much? Twice a day. When? For one week. Okay. What, how much and when? So here's the next one. I will go to yoga one time this week. What? Go to yoga. How much? One time. When? This week. And then the last one is about the house cleaning, which we all hate. I will sweep the kitchen floor once today, which you can see also fits right into the formula. So looking at it this way, Valerie, were you able to convert your goal into a smart goal?
Valerie Milburn: I was. I was able to break it down into something that is workable for me and has taken away the overwhelming feeling, and that is, I will list the replacement plants. Work on that list for 30 minutes this weekend.
Helen Sneed: Great.
Valerie Milburn: Great.
Helen Sneed: Okay.
Valerie Milburn: 30 minutes I can handle. It has to be done this weekend. That feels really good.
Valerie Milburn: And solid sense of accomplishment. Will. Will happen. Feels really good.
Helen Sneed: Okay, good.
Valerie Milburn: So it's doable. It's doable.
Helen Sneed: All right. Well, mine is again, this, you know, wanting to write a book. I will sit at my computer for one hour, five days this week. So, you see, it's just an hour a day. If I'll just get in there and sit at my computer, I know I can get some work done. So anyway, that's sort of the basic story of a smart goal and what it can do for you and the way to look at beginning to use it in your own life. We would encourage you to explore smart goals further if you think that this can be of help to you, because there's a lot of more that can be learned. So we've got this methodology and technique, but Valerie and I both believe that you can't do it without skills.
Valerie Milburn: Absolutely.
Helen Sneed: And the reason I. I figured out why I like skills so much is because they are actions that can be taken and I get paralyzed. And if I can live in my head for, you know, for years and never take action. So this is why we wanted to bring up skills, too.
Valerie Milburn: I'm going to steal your line. You always say action is all, and it's A great line.
Helen Sneed: It is. And especially for girls. My gosh. Practical skills can be a godsend for pursuing, achieving, and maintaining goals. And the great thing about skills is that you can use more for one more than one. If you get stuck and a skill doesn't work, try another. So here are some skills for achieving and maintaining goals in the face of a mental health condition. Number one, try to schedule just a part of each day. Again, as we keep talking about maybe just a half hour. Try to do one thing in that half hour, and if you get it done, your day is a success.
Valerie Milburn: Absolutely. Another important skill for me is exercise. I walk nearly every morning. It's important for me to get focused to exercise. I often listen to a mindfulness podcast or I listen to a book. Proper sleep is the other thing that is. I can't even say enough about sleep. My doctor once wrote eight hours of sleep on a prescription pad. That's how important sleep is. Another thing for me is journaling. It's a skill that I have honed over the years. I have a line that's drilled into me by my sponsor. She calls journaling head to heart to handle, get it out of my head, run it through my heart so that it's true to me, and write it with my hand. Head to heart to hand.
Helen Sneed: Well, it is. I still do it. I've done it now for several decades, and I couldn't do without journal writing. Speaking of writing, another thing is I have to put my goal in writing, and that includes an action plan and timeline, which are things that you develop over time with a smart goal. And I have to put it where I can see it so that I won't lose sight of what my overall objection is, you know, when daily living kind of brings me down.
Valerie Milburn: Yes, you're the queen of post it notes. I love it. You're always saying, let me put it on a post it note. Hold on. The next skill for me is respect my limitations. And I have talked about that. Just knowing what I can and can't do and being really kind of funny about it, knowing, like Helen, you just a minute ago said, you're going to sit at your desk for an hour each day, which is great. I can do that as well about certain things. But I know about this thing going on in my yard. There's no way I could look at that for even 30 minutes, five days in a row. I would, I would. I just couldn't do it. So I. I know that's my limitation. I'm so overwhelmed by. By this Just one step at a time.
Helen Sneed: Once. One bush at a time.
Valerie Milburn: One bush at a time.
Helen Sneed: Okay. Being here with you today brings to mind something that I find indispensable, which is to have the support from another person. And it's someone who respects me and my goal. And, Valerie, you're just so wonderful about doing that. And it's someone that not only can cheer me on when I'm doing well, but can be sympathetic and, you know, and. And kind when I'm feeling down on myself because I haven't made any progress. I've actually slipped backwards. It's sort of like having a collaborator on your goal. And I really, really recommend helps.
Valerie Milburn: Yes. Remember the day I sent you a picture of my filing stack?
Helen Sneed: Yes.
Valerie Milburn: I was going to work on it for an hour, and an hour later I sent you the picture of the empty spot where the stack
Valerie Milburn: had been an hour before.
Helen Sneed: Yes. It really does work.
Valerie Milburn: It does.
Helen Sneed: To be held accountable in a way, but not in a negative way. The other thing is, what we've just talked about is try to be action oriented. Again, your goal needs to come out of your head, and it needs to become into your life and be something that you can support through steps. And then usually they are actual steps that you need to take.
Valerie Milburn: Absolutely. Now, the other skill that has, something that you and I both have done because we do this together, is teaching about goal setting. You and I actually met teaching a class for nami, the national alliance on Mental Illness. We teach a class called Peer to Peer, a wonderful class that NAMI runs, and we taught about goal setting in that class. We also developed a class for NAMI called Stories and Strategies. And we teach about goals, goal setting in that class. And both of us continue to hone our skills by teaching about it.
Helen Sneed: Well, yeah. And again, through teaching, it is where I learned most of this. The great bulk of everything, for the first time. But I hope that the people I was teaching didn't. Didn't know that, but they probably probably figured it out.
Valerie Milburn: I don't think so.
Helen Sneed: So the final skills that we really respect are, again, measure progress, not completion. Please try to never lose sight of your progress. Because I had to learn to respect small goals, and I also had to learn to forgive myself. When I fall back, I try not to beat myself up. There's this wonderful quote from the great Nelson Mandela, and he said, do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.
Valerie Milburn: I love that quote. Inherent in that quote is that we have to take Risks that we are going to fall down because setting a goal is opening yourself up to risk. I have fallen down, but I get back up again. I took a risk. We took a risk starting this podcast, and it's worked out really well. I took a risk when I retired not knowing what I was going to do. And goal setting in recovery has been. Has been an adventure and it's been a work, working effort, and it's been successful because it takes risk, it takes courage, and it takes work. And I have enjoyed the work of goal setting. I think my summary of my outlook on goals is do not look back. Do not compare then with now. Relish the now, and set goals for the next.
Helen Sneed: Ah, those are words to live by. That's really rather profound. I do know that I don't think that I'm as smart about this as you are, but I have to remind myself frequently that staying in recovery is my biggest goal. And the way I manage it, as we keep saying again and again, is to keep the steps small. And in the moment, in the day at hand, it is so easy for me to become overwhelmed and paralyzed. And yes, there are many times when I want to quit. But one thing that sustains me is to realize that, yes, I will slide back, make mistakes, miss my goal. I can't be perfect, but I must remember that there is great courage and strength. And in being brave enough to risk having a dream and a vision for yourself. And if I can keep myself active and forgive myself when I slip and fall, I know one thing is true. It is never too late to achieve your heart's desire. Try not to lose sight of that. It is never too late.
Valerie Milburn: You're right. It's never too late. We have to fervently believe that we can achieve our heart's desire. And that leads me to a quote by Pablo Picasso. Picasso said, our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan in which we must fervently believe and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no
Valerie Milburn: other route to success. Pablo Picasso. We're going to focus on two concepts from that quote to lead us into our mindfulness exercise today. And those two concepts are fervently believe and vigorously act. Yes, it's mindfulness time. I always begin with the definition. What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. So today we're going to follow some steps to practice a guided visualization about putting a Goal into our future. Let's take a deep breath to begin. Let it out and begin by choosing an area of your life. Begin with an area of your life in mind. I want you to choose an area where you have been struggling or would like to experience some transformation. Now begin to imagine the highest possible outcome that you would like to be living in this area. You have chosen this area of your life. In six to 12 months, imagine the highest possible outcome that you would like to be living in this area of your life. Imagine living your life the way you would envision it if all your hopes and dreams were to come true. What is your ultimate reality? Fervently believe in this ultimate reality, even if just for now. Try not to get hung up on limitations or negativity. Instead, just allow yourself to get carried away with your wildest aspirations. Fervently believe that you can achieve this ultimate reality. Next, let's connect with two concrete goals. Two vigorous actions that you can do to make this ultimate reality come true. Remember, no goal is too small and vigorous is different for each of us. Be realistic, but be bold. Now run those two goals through the specific, measurable and timely criteria to make sure they meet a smart goal. You're all set. Now that you've connected with your vision, that vision of your ultimate reality, you've connected two concrete goals with that ultimate reality. Imagine now what your life will be like once you have completed it. Create a picture or a movie in your mind and step inside the visual representation as if you are inside it and looking through your own eyes. Who is there with you? Where are you? What is happening around you? Good job fervently believing in your ultimate reality so that you could visualize it. Now it's time to commit to that second concept that vigorously act. Commit to vigorously act on those two concrete goals. Those two concrete goals will move you in the direction of your ultimate reality. Remember, we must think big, but must ultimately come to the small steps. Thank you for doing this mindfulness exercise with me.
Helen Sneed: Oh, thank you, Valerie. You know, that was the perfect exercise for goal setting. I don't know how you do it. As we have demonstrated today, goals are a big topic that can be broken down into small, manageable steps. We hope you will feel proud to have a vision and that your pride and passion will support you. Our next episode is all about eating disorders. We'll have a guest therapist to join us in our exploration of one of the most powerful and least understood mental health conditions. If you or a loved one struggles
Helen Sneed: with eating disorders, don't miss it.
Valerie Milburn: Thank you to our listeners. As always, we are honored that you have joined us today. We look forward to having you with us on our next episode.
Helen Sneed: And we leave you with the most excellent concept and word. Onward.