Setting Goals Can Help With Depression

Sometimes your mental health journey may start to feel like a chore. It can be draining, confusing, and even frustrating at times. Seeing the progress you’ve made and how far you’ve come can be like watching grass grow. By setting goals effectively and working towards specific tasks, it can help alleviate the stress that is often associated with depression. 

How Goals Help Depression Symptoms 

Short term goals or long term goals can each help an individual in different aspects of their daily life. Short term goals may feel like you’re achieving things faster and thus encouraging you to keep going at a more consistent pace. On the other hand, long term goals may give you a bigger sense of accomplishment. A healthy balance of both long term and short term goals can keep up motivation while getting the gratification of capability. 

When you do carry out a goal that you’ve set your mind to, it can give you an increased sense of self confidence and reassurance. Staying positive throughout this process is essential to giving you the mental tools you need and help you with any feelings of hopelessness. Setting goals can lead to success in multiple areas of your life but by simply believing in your ability to reach your goals and to continuously pursue them, you’ll start to see more positive outcomes and regain a sense of purpose. 

Setting S.M.A.R.T Goals Effectively

If you’re learning to set goals in your life to help with your depression symptoms, you more than likely heard about S.M.A.R.T goals and the success you can have with them. S.M.A.R.T goals are often used to break down long term goals or goals that have multiple steps to them (i.e self care or taking a study break after a certain amount of time). Breaking down these goals and looking into the individual steps it takes to achieve it can give you the boost you need to set goals that help you. 

• Specific (Does your goal answer who, what, when, where, why, or which?)
• Measurable (Does your goal include how much or how many?)
• Achievable (Is your goal reachable?)
• Relevant (Is your goal worthwhile?)
• Time-based (Does your goal answer when?)

At Eva Carlston Academy, we often encourage our students to work with their therapist and support system to come up realistic goals that can help them in their struggle with depression. We’ve seen an improvement in our students’ self esteem and self confidence when we implement goal setting in their life. We believe that it encourages them to make decisions that affect their outcomes and help their sense of self worth and abilities. 

Setting goals and mental health go hand in hand and can give structure to someone who may be struggling with depression. Depression can often make an individual feel out of control of their life or have a lost sense of purpose. Goals can be a great way to interweave the feelings of accomplishment and normalcy back into their lives.