Leverage Healthy Activities To Increase Goal Oriented Behavior.

Table of Contents

How To Fight Depression: Step 8 of 12

How to Fight Depression by Leveraging Healthy Activities.

This post discusses the fourth set of skills for learning to cope with depression through identifying barriers to engaging in healthy activities, using goal pacing to break down goals into actionable steps and using pleasure predicting to reinforce the importance of being consistent and taking acceptable risks. Now we will learn how to leverage meaningful activity to align our behavior with our long-term goals and dreams, which is crucial for maintaining a positive outlook and sense of hope, inspiration and motivation. These skills will help you learn how to fight depression.

In this post I will cover:

The importance of maintaining constant goals.
Exploring your ideals for the future.
Why we need long and short-term goals that are in agreement.
Planning tasks to reach our short-term goals.

Before reading on, be sure to review the skills discussed in my previous post, How To Cope With Depression In 12 Proven Steps: Step 7.

The Importance Of Maintaining Constant Goals

There is a subtle difference between inspiration and motivation. Inspiration is akin to infatuation. It will drive us to make a start, but we often give up when the real work, investment and sacrifice begins. This is a primary issue with depression, which lends toward the misconception that motivation precedes productivity. Quite to the contrary, motivation is born out of productivity.

We know that depression depletes our sense of motivation and with it our notion of purpose. As we begin to make traction in recovery, we regain some our energy. If we have not thought out our goals in some fashion, then our periods of motivation are at risk of being lost to points of indecision. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of striking while the iron is hot, and in order to do that, we need a sense of direction before the motivation kicks in.

Goals provide us with a vehicle to structure our energies, a focal point to inform our priorities and a litmus test for our value-based behavior, all of which contribute to our sense of meaning and purpose. If you have several goals already identified, this is a good time to determine what you want as your first order of business. If you find yourself struggling to come up with some meaningful goals, consider your value system and morals (remember the life domains we spoke about in earlier posts in this series?); these generally speak to beliefs around family, work ethic, altruism, spirituality, economics, health and learning.

Caution! Some goals may seem well intentioned, but can be counter-productive. These types of goals revolve around skewed motives or unrealistic expectations, such as being perfect, seeking approval from others at the cost of personal needs and boundaries, imposing your goals on others and setting goals out of a sense of obligation or guilt.

So, to summarize, your goals are informed by your values, and goals have a defined purpose that are in line with your values.

Exploring Your Ideals For The Future

Even though you may not feel motivated initially, making strides towards your goals will help to improve your mood, and this is accomplished in seeing small gains along the way. The more you can see the product of your efforts come to fruition, the easier it is to keep your momentum as you learn how to fight depression.

Given that long-term goals are generally audacious, they are usually projected at least a year out. A year is a long time to wait to see positive outcomes. Therefore, it is imperative that we string our short-term goals together in a fashion that both speaks to our long-terms goals, and also our various life domains discussed earlier (self-care, learning, meaningful activities and relationships).

Why We Need Long and Short-Term Goals That Are In Agreement

Long-term and short-term goals work in concert together to facilitate the quality of life that you idealize in your mind’s eye. Everything is created twice, first in your thoughts, then in your actions. As Stephen Covey stated in his work, -7 Habits of Highly Effective People-, “Begin with the end in mind.”

First, we start with a long-term goal, and not just any goal, but an audacious one, that is far enough out of your comfort zone that it scares you just a little. Getting comfortable with getting outside your comfort zone is a vital lesson in learning how to fight depression.

Planning Tasks To Reach Our Short-Term Goals

Since we are indeed working backwards from our long-term goals, it is imperative that we have as crystal clear, HD vision of what it is that we want to accomplish. When working with my therapy clients, I will usually start out our initial session with this question; “What do you want to see different in your life one to five years from now?” I usually have to push my clients to frame their goals in definitive terms, as the pull for most people, is to talk in general, ambiguous terms. Furthermore, I also lead my clients to frame their goals in terms of what they want to add to their life, not remove, or avoid; again, think in terms of value. Change occurs in proxy, meaning that you are much more likely to quit something as a secondary decision after adding something beneficial. For example, if you want to quit smoking, focus on other health goals, such as lowing cholesterol and working vegetables into your diet, or increasing exercise, or any other known factor to move you closer to your health goal; once you see the progress, the habit of smoking becomes exposed as an incongruent, inconvenient player in your ecosystem, and you are much more prone to tackling it as opposed to if you were focused on quitting the habit in isolation of other positive, meaningful goals.

The following are the general steps in formulating meaningful goals

-Start with the things you naturally care the most about. This will help you maintain consistency when motivation dwindles.

-Be sure to keep your expectations within reason. Create goals that are challenging, but attainable.

-Set goals that you can pursue within your current means (finances, time, etc..)

-Set deadlines. This is crucial to avoid procrastination. Most audacious goals are accomplished in small, regular portions. For example, you can write a 200 page book inside six months with only putting in 15 minutes or 500 words a day.

-Attention to detail. Concrete goals are sure to address the when, where, how much, how often and with whom. Learning how to fight depression comes down to specific and intentional behavior.

-Set goals that you can dictate/control. This means limiting as many contingencies as possible, especially in relation to others. You have no control over how others operate, so do not give away you power to influence change in your life by setting up yourself to be dependent on others to change.

-Set goals for yourself, not for other people. For what improves your quality of life, not because you are seeking acceptance from another person, or because they tell you it is what you need. Listen to your wise mind, and what you know you need to grow.

-Remember, when you follow thought with the tasks YOU have committed to, YOU have made progress, regardless of the feedback others provide, especially if unsolicited.

-Practice the art of Goal-Pacing; breaking your larger goals down into digestible, traceable tasks. These miniature goals require you to be methodical and kept within your control. Progress is easier to identify when goals are broken down into smaller tasks.

-Short-term goals generally have a six month lifespan/deadline, and propel you toward your more audacious ones.

-CELEBRATE your achievements, however small they may seem in the moment.

Practice

-Define a long term-goal that improves your quality and speaks to your values (1-5 years)

-Define a short-term goal (can be accomplished in the next six months) that moves you closer to your long-term goal.

-commit to: When

-commit to: What

-commit to: How Much/How Often

-commit to: Where

Review

-Reflecting and acknowledging daily on what you are grateful for, having daily activities you enjoy around those values, and always having plans for the future all help to maintain a healthy mood.

-Working backwards from long-term goals helps to create meaningful short-term goals/activities and maintaining sense of progress, which builds a stronger sense of self and improves your mood.

-Setting and achieving goals is an indispensable rhythm for creating a future that you want and how to fight depression. You must be intentional. As Tony Robins would say, “life is happening for you, not to you.”

Looking Ahead

–You just finished the second pillar of skills for coping with depress, Activities.

-Next, we will be moving on to the third and final Pillar in the foundational coping skills for depression; Relationships. Over the next four posts, I will cover the pitfalls of depression in relationships and the skills necessary for creating and leveraging healthy relationship to not just cope with life, but to thrive in it!

Feedback

What did you find helpful from this post?
What skills have you learned in this series of posts that find most effective in improving your mood and learning how to fight depression?
What suggestions would you have for others battling depression when it comes to planning activities?

It is my mission to equip you with valuable and effective coping skills and clinical interventions, to improve your mood, be more productive and improve your quality of life, so you can do more, and worry less.

ASK: If you have a question you’d like me to answer here on the blog (even if you think it’s a silly one!), please use the form on the CONTACT ME page, or the comment section below. I would be happy to take a poke at it and provide a long form answer when appropriate.

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