Setting and Reaching Goals

The New Year brings a sense of “Renovation” with opportunities to start the year with a clean slate. Most people will set resolutions for the year with good intention of keeping them, but more often than not, those resolutions disappear within the first three months of making them. Why?

Change sucks…

As much as we’d like things to simply stay the same as our comfort zone is deemed as sacred ground, in order for us to grow and better ourselves, change is a necessity. I often write about how to maintain stability and understanding within a bipolar relationship, but with putting in such effort to do so, even as it relates to my own relationship, it becomes very difficult to plan ahead and consider change.

Unfortunately, one of the most common changes that I see when it comes to bipolar relationships, is that a lot of couples end up calling it quits and the relationship is ended. I’ve also posted in the past that severing such a connection isn’t always bad as if one or all participants cannot handle the challenges, it’s not fair to keep things going under false pretenses.

Bipolar relationships are not laid out on a schedule, or project plan simply because the disorder isn’t necessarily reliable enough for us to know when it will hit us with the next episode or cycle shift. This is not to say that we cannot put together new goals and strive to reach and exceed those goals, but we must be willing to accept the fact that our paths truly follow the “one-step-forward-two-steps-back” approach if we are not careful.

Everything is measured in baby steps as for all we know, change itself can bring on a trigger that could potentially blow the relationship back to square one. The key isn’t necessarily to come up with brand new goals that haven’t been thought of or attempted in the past. Again, with baby steps, we can simply focus on what it is we do today that may not be as rock solid as we’d like, so work on fixing those gaps first.

Goals provide a positive outlook and offer us an internal “compass” on getting us to where we’d like to be. As comforting as it is to stay right where we are, sometimes we need to look at the big picture and determine if, where we are now is anywhere remotely close to where we really wish to be. If it is, think again because you may be kidding yourself due to the whole fear of stepping out of the box deal.

It’s a New Year…whether you make goals or resolutions, what has worked for you in the past? What hasn’t worked and maybe needs a new attempt going forward?

With a passion to reach out and to help others, Rich opens up a direct view into the trials and tribulations that come with managing a bipolar relationship and how to use real-world techniques to aid in stability and support.

Rich Wallace

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