Courage from the Past to Set Goals for the Future
With the start of a new year, many people set resolutions for themselves. At Courage to Caregivers, we like to focus on goals instead of resolutions. As this article explains, setting a goal is exciting and meaningful, with a focus on self-reflection and progress. Resolutions, on the other hand, are usually all-or-nothing, and people who give up their New Year’s resolutions often feel that they’ve failed.
To help you set your goals for 2022, we’ve created this Goal Making Worksheet, which also includes our January calendar of micro-goal challenges in case you need additional inspiration or motivation. These micro-goals can help you make progress by starting small. Many of our participants have printed this calendar to display it in a place where they can see it often. It reminds them about their daily practice of well-being.
A personal timeline can serve as a guide for setting goals, and that just happens to be our first weekly topic of the new year, as part of this month’s theme: Dream BIG. Organizing your experiences by creating a personal timeline of your past is an exercise that allows you to see the positive and negative flow of your life on one page. Your timeline is unique to you and shows a series of events, circumstances, and choices that have impacted your life.
Here are some of the benefits of creating a personal timeline:
Helps you see the impact of past choices, and helps you make future changes to improve your life
Reveals themes that connect different events
Highlights the growth, personal achievements, and new knowledge you have gained
Provides an understanding of your sense of purpose and the meaning of your life as it relates to past and future events
As we all know, our journey as caregivers is complicated, and it’s never linear. The road is often bumpy with twists and turns. And sometimes, we have to choose between two or more ways forward. We want to face this journey with courage instead of fear, and that’s why our name is Courage to Caregivers. We’re all about having the courage to make the hard decisions, to accept who and where we are, and to look forward with hope, not backward with regret.
Your journey is yours and yours only. And remember, being a caregiver is just one part of it. How you navigate your entire journey – past, present, and future – is your personal story of courage. It’s a huge part of YOUR success and who YOU are.