Often times we get anxious or sad because our life is not what we want it to be and we don’t have a plan in place for making it any better. This often leads to us feeling worse, problems escalating and feeling overwhelmed.  But there is a way through this. Having a plan can give us hope and encouragement and keep us on track.

A Plan to work toward a more satisfying life:

1. Recognize the value of our emotions
2. Honor our Emotions
3. Take Inventory – How satisfied are we with all areas/domains of our life.
4. Start working toward a plan for improvement. The best way to do this is one step at a time.

Recognize the value of our emotions – Many times when we talk about our problems with friends and family they will provide some empathy and support then jump right into problem solving. While they mean well, this can be invalidating and teach us that emotions are something to run away from something to keep at a distance. After years of relating to our emotions in this way, we may be numb to the character of our emotions seeing them in gross categories like anger, fear, despair, sadness and hopelessness.

• Escaping our emotions leads to a build up of problems
• Trying to just let it go – keeps us up at night and invalidates our authenticity

But there is another way to relate to our emotions. To recognize and honor them rather than pushing them away. When we do this we can relate to our emotions as a barometer of how true we are being to ourselves and how satisfied we are with life. Listening to this barometer can keep us grounded, authentic and on track with our purpose and goals.

Honoring our Emotions  In my experience, the best way to honor our emotions is to accept them and explore them without trying to shove them down or put them out of our minds. This can be a scary and fearful place to dwell, particularly if we are not used to dealing with our emotions in such a straight forward manner. But consider the coping methods many of us use to escape.

• alcohol and drugs
• binge eating
• relationship dissatisfaction
• self-loathing
• reckless behavior

Further, if we keep pushing our emotions down we need to keep escalating our coping behaviors just to maintain our balance. Then when one more problem comes along in a relationship, bills, car problems, or issues at work where do we turn? While much of this work can be done on your own, involving close friends or even a professional counselor or therapist into the mix can help give you great leverage, accountability and perspective.

Take Inventory – How satisfied are we with all areas/domains of our life. Reviewing the table below you can select your satisfaction level for each major area/domain of your life. The purpose of this is to give you a snapshot of what’s working and what needs work, right now.

As you move forward in identifying your goals, breaking down these goals into achievable minor goals and minor minor goals you will have this benchmark to look back on. After you complete your planning sheets and start making progress you can fill this inventory in again and see your progress and identify your challenges.

Start working toward a plan for improvement. The best way to do this is one step at a time. Partializing our goals into much smaller achievable goals, and making them process based can be extremely helpful in keeping us motivated, successful and decreasing our stress levels. Process based goals, allow us to focus on things we control like how much time we spend on a task, what research we do or who we talk to. This can free us to work on those things that we generate effective results.

For example, if my goal is to get a job.

My Major goal may be get a job paying $10 per hour with at least 10 hours a week work

My Minor goals could be:

• Prepare my resume
• Get all of my work history together
• Apply for 3 jobs
• Go to a one stop career center and look for jobs
• Enroll in a resume class.

My Minor Minor goals could be as follows:

• Identify one job I can apply for
• Look at volunteer options
• Ask 1 friend if they know of any open jobs

A Sample planning sheet follows:

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Written by James Meyer, LCSW        The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by McKay, Wood & Brantley