This is Why Most Goal-Setting Advice Doesn’t Work
The traditional advice has a fundamental flaw.
Imagine you’ve hit your goals, that you’ve done it on the timeline you set up for yourself, even though it seemed impossible — and despite having mental health issues. It’s the dream. It’s fun to escape to that alternate reality and let yourself inhabit your theoretical ‘best self.’ It’s fun to stay there for a while.
But achieving goals is so much more difficult than most people make it sound because goals are supposed to be hard, right?
When you’re struggling with mental health issues, it sounds like a pipe dream that only naive optimists cling to when things get tough. It sounds impossible.
But the weird thing is, for once our tendency to be pessimistic is well-founded. Because underneath that optimism there’s usually a missing piece that can derail any hope of success: Goal setting seems straightforward, and it’s usually presented that way. But people aren’t straightforward, regardless of their mental health status.
We’re complicated and moody, our minds change and priorities and situations shift. And, most of the time, people don’t consider these things because accounting for all…
