When you first get into recovery from an addiction to drugs or alcohol, all you can really focus on is staying sober. This is totally normal and appropriate. Reorienting yourself so that you are no longer driven by the compulsion to get high or drunk is a lot of work. In fact, it’s downright exhausting.
For the first few months of sobriety, remaining abstinent is all you SHOULD think about. Addiction is a life-threatening disease. It has the potential to rob you of your life, your sanity, and your sense of well-being. It’s okay to dedicate at least the first six months of your recovery to just staying sober one day at a time.
Remaining abstinent for the next 24 hours is a reasonable – and very attainable – daily goal in early sobriety. But, chances are, by the time you reach six months of sobriety, you will feel like a completely different person who is ready to take on more ambitious goals.
The Benefit of Setting Goals In Addiction Recovery
As your recovery progresses, you will find that staying sober becomes much easier. While you still may confront the occasional craving from time to time, they won’t be nearly as powerful as they were in the beginning. Navigating sobriety will eventually become more comfortable for you. And, as you continue to work a recovery program, you will begin to search for deeper meaning and a greater purpose in life. This is why setting goals that extend beyond mere abstinence can help you continue to maintain long-term sobriety.
Here is how goal-setting can help you in addiction recovery:
1.Setting goals gives you purpose. Goals give you something to work toward. They give your life meaning. While daily recovery should always be your top priority, setting goals beyond just staying sober will help make your sobriety richer and much more rewarding.
2. Setting and achieving goals will boost your self-esteem. When you accomplish a goal, it makes you feel good about yourself. You feel a sense of accomplishment and your confidence level gets a boost.
3. Goals help you stay focused on maximizing your time. If you always wander around aimlessly, you will begin to feel as if your life has no direction. You will start to think that you are just wasting your life away. Goal-setting forces you to prioritize your time so that you can build a better life for yourself. This means that when you look back on your life many years from now, you can be proud of your achievements and feel good about what you did with your time.
4. Goal-setting can help you grow your support system. Usually, when you want to accomplish a goal, you need to interact with other people to make it happen. Meeting other people who are working toward your same goal allows you the opportunity to make new, healthy relationships.
5. Setting goals in recovery improves your quality of life. Whether it’s going back to college, saving money, buying a new car, losing weight, getting in better physical shape, taking up a new hobby, or learning a new skill; when you accomplish a goal, it makes your life better.
Setting goals is an important aspect of life for people everywhere – but it is especially vital to those who are working a recovery program. Goal-setting will keep you excited about your sobriety and motivate you to continue to improve your life.
Think about some things you want to accomplish in your life. Set some goals to make these dreams come true. They will enhance your life with purpose and meaning and give you something to look forward to beyond your next 24 hours of sobriety.