One of the reasons I love January is the feeling of newness in the air. There’s an entire year ahead of us, fresh and waiting to be lived. Goals are a great way to help us fill up the blank months stretching out before us. With bipolar disorder, though, we have to think about goals a little differently. The last thing we want to do is overextend ourselves and go manic.

How do we make goals and make sure we pace ourselves correctly? Over the years, I’ve come to realize 3 characteristics goals need and 5 steps to effectively make them.

3 Key Ingredients

It’s easy to get carried away with goals. We tend to want them done quickly. Often we also look at the final project without thinking about the steps of how to get there.

To avoid burnout, it’s important to make sure your goals are these 3 things:

• specific – make them as specific as possible
• small – break up your goals into bite-sized steps
• slow – give yourself plenty of time to finish

5 Tips

By keeping those characteristics in mind, you’ll be able to plan out your goals without causing overwhelm.

1. Accept you may have to pause your goals

Life throws us curveballs. With bipolar disorder, hypomanic and depressive episodes raise their ugly heads even when we’re taking our medication, sleeping, eating well, and doing all the things we need to.

When I’m depressed, I tend to allocate all of my energy to just getting through the day. I don’t push myself too much to accomplish all the things. I focus on what’s most important while I work on getting out my slump: taking care of me. Once I feel better, I begin working on projects again.

The thing about working on goals is that you don’t need to be perfect – you need to have determination. Taking a small break for the sake of your health isn’t a bad thing. You can’t reach for the stars if you’re too exhausted to lift your hand.

2. Identify specific areas you’d like to improve

Lots of goals are generic. For example: I want to be healthier. That’s great, but how are you going to do that?

This is when you narrow down that goal into specifics. I’ll use my goal of being healthier as an example. It’s important to get down to the root of why you want to work on that goal.

For me, I want to be healthier because I don’t feel very healthy. Doing small tasks leaves me winded. I’m much too sedintary in my life. I’ve noticed I haven’t been eating very well for several years now. After looking at all those reasons, I’m able to break down the broader goal of I want to be healthier into two more specific, focused goals:

• I want to eat healither
• I want to exercise more

3. Break down your goals into small steps

How can I do that, though? This is where we break things down into small, bite-sized steps.

For January, this is what I’ll do to eat healthier:

• Delete Uber Eats from my phone
• Eat one salad a week
• Research and make a list of healthy snacks

That’s it. If I do too much more, I’ll get sidetracked and overwhelmed. Then in February, I’ll work on eating two salads a week and meal planning.

4. Track your progress

I used to dig my heels in with this step. However, it’s critical to growth. If we don’t track our progress, we’re not going to learn what worked well for us and what didn’t. We won’t be able to see how we improve, or what changes we need to make to our goals.

For the last several years I’ve used Cultivate What Matters’ PowerSheets (not an ad or affiliate link – I just love their products). You don’t need a fancy planner or notebook to track your success, though. You can print out a simple calendar to keep track of things or make/repurpose a habit tracker.

5. Give yourself time

You have 365 days in a year (366 in a Leap Year). Don’t expect yourself to write, edit, and publish and entire book in two months. Don’t overwork yourself to earn $1,000,000 in three months. Space things out. You have plenty of time.

If you’re able to complete a goal quicker than expected, that’s great! You can move on to the next part of that goal, make a new one, or focus on the other ones you already have going.

As cliche as this is, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You didn’t know how to walk the day you were born. A tree isn’t fully grown after one week. Good things take time. Go at your pace.

The rest of this month, I’ll be sharing the 4 personal goals that I’ve made for this year. I hope that you’ll join me in working on one or two things you want to accomplish this year.

Cultivate What Matters has a saying: “There’s nothing magic aboit January 1st.” It’s so true. Even though I love the feeling of a fresh new year, we can start working on goals whenever we want to. If you haven’t made any this year but want to, I encourage you to set some this weekend. Take your time to really dig into what you want to do and how to break them down into smaller pieces.

2025 will be our year!