129. New Years Resolutions For Your Mental Health: SMART Goals, My 2023 Intentions, + More

Jan 5

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Today's solo episode is all about new year's resolutions and goals for 2023! I cover why people with anxiety tend to set unrealistic goals, shifting your mental health goals from being results-based to actionable steps, types of mental health goals to set for this year, SMART goals, and my resolutions/intentions for 2023!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Ep. 120 Mental Health Habits

+ Lost Connections

+ Building a Life Worth Living

+ Atomic Habits

+ SMART goals

+ A Fearless Heart (book on compassion)

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About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Sadie: [00:00:00] Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in

hello. Hello and welcome back to She Persisted. Happy New Year. Happy 2023.

I love New Year's. I don't know if you guys like studying resolutions or not. I personally love them because, I love setting goals. It's really exciting for me to think about where I wanna grow, where I want to improve, where I would see myself in the future. And it also just feels like January, [00:01:00] there's so much potential for growth.

It's such a great opportunity to reflect and look at the past year and how you wanna change for the next year. And I love to set a ton of goals, even though I never meet all them, but that is totally. So in today's episode, I'm gonna take you through

The goals that I'm setting for this year, different D B T slash therapy skills I've learned that can help with goal setting and being effective with your goal setting. And lastly, different ways that you can set goals for your mental health that would be more effective than focusing on things that you can't really control, if that makes sense.

So as I was reflecting on the goals I set last year and the goals I wanted to set for this year, I noticed a trend of setting really extravagant and intense extreme goals for , myself, especially when it comes to like personal health and routine. So things. Getting 12,000 steps a day, going to bed by 9:00 PM being up by 6:00 AM.

All of these things that are really far from my current routine and not things that I'm currently doing. And I think this is partially a societal thing, and yet we see a lot of people on social media that are years into their journeys and we [00:02:00] compare ourselves to that. But I also had a therapist tell me one time that this can be a really common trait of people with anxiety.

That people with anxiety tend to set more ambitious goals. And there are two reasons I think this might be, which I thought would be helpful to share because they've been helpful reminders for me to keep and and have in mind when I'm setting goals and trying to achieve them. And so the first one is that when we don't achieve our goals, we get more anxious and then we set another goal because we're anxious because we didn't achieve that initial goal.

And so it becomes a really vicious cycle. We're anxious, so we get a set of goal to try and fix what we're anxious about, and then we don't need it, so we're anxious again, and it just keeps going and going and become very overwhelming. Another thing that I think is at play here is that when we're anxious, we're somewhat out of touch with reality. We are interpreting things as greater threats than they are, whether that's a timeline, an interpersonal interaction, the impact that something will have on our future, maybe an emotion. All of these things are amplified and we interpret them as having a bigger impact on our life or a bigger threat to our life than they actually.[00:03:00]

And so I feel like this trait really does carry over to our goals. So when we're setting a timeline to create a new habit or implement something new into our routine, we are still out of touch with reality when it comes to the timeline and how realistic it is and how likely the thing is to happen.

And so our, our expectations are really skewed. And so I think that we set these really big intense goals. And for me, I really have to differentiate like, okay, this is what I want, but is this a realistic goal? Because there are two different things, and I feel like I really forget that a lot of the time, like, this is a long-term goal.

This is something I desire, this is something I want, but is it realistic to just immediately expect that to happen even if I set the intention? So I thought that was something that's really interesting that I haven't really heard very many places before about anxiety and about goal setting and a really interesting connection and correlation.

The next thing that I wanted to share related to setting goals in mental health is I feel like it's a really common perception that a lot of goals and progress markers when it comes to mental health are things that are out of our control.

So we'll say, I want to stop being [00:04:00] depressed. I wanna stop having panic attacks. I wanna stop being anxious. I don't wanna be so have social anxiety, all of these different things, but they're external markers. They're not something that you can control. You can't wake up and say, I'm not gonna be depressed, I'm not gonna be anxious, I'm not gonna have a panic attack.

A lot of those are things that occur without you, like making an active choice or, or decision, or it's a culmination of a lot of decisions and beliefs and emotions and all of these different things. So to set the goal for 2023 of I'm not gonna be depressed or I'm gonna recover, is really challenging to achieve and also outside of your control.

And so instead, I find it helpful to shift to smaller, more achievable and effective goals that can improve your mental health. And so when I was thinking about what those are and ways that you can kind of categorize them, I came up with physical health relationships, your internal monologue and your resources, and there are so many more. But those are the pillars that I've tended to focus on and that I thought would be helpful to share with you.

So with regards to your physical health, it is very established and very well known that our physical and mental health are very connected. When we [00:05:00] are active in getting outside and eating consistently and sleeping well, our mental health improves and it's really helpful to think of your physical health as a foundation or a vulnerability factor for your mental health. So if your physical health is struggling, you'll be more vulnerable to struggling with your mental health. So if you were to set a goal in your physical health pillar when you're trying to improve your mental health, maybe it's getting a certain number of steps every day. Maybe you're gonna try to work out a certain number of times a week. Maybe you're gonna set a goal around diet of like, I'm gonna try and incorporate this food group more.

Or, I'm going to try and drink more water. I'm gonna get this many hours of sleep every night. These little things that you can do to improve that foundation and improve your . Resilience. The next pillar that came to mind is relationships. This is another very highly established pillar of life that impacts our mental health.

When we are not connected and receiving validation and support and communication, we struggle. And so while relationships seem like an external factor, there are lots of things that you do have control over that you could do to improve your relationships and build new relationships you feel [00:06:00] supported.

So maybe that is saying, I'm gonna join this many clubs at school, or I'm going to talk to this many people in my classes. Or I'm gonna get phone numbers from this many people in my new classes that I have someone to talk to and chat with and study with. Or I'm going to reach out to a friend that I don't always talk.

Once or twice a week. These little things that you can do to either build a new relationship and then if you're maintaining a relationship, maybe it's, I'm gonna text a friend this certain friend three times a week, or I'm gonna schedule a FaceTime call with this family member once a week, or I'm gonna set, set a standing like workout or coffee date with this friend every single Tuesday, whatever it is, things that you can do to maintain and improve your relationships and be intentional about that. You could also set the goal to be more vulnerable, to work on your validation of the other person, to work on your listening skills, things that you can do to improve the quality of that relationship, and also the quantity of relationships you have if you're feeling like you're not supported enough.

The next thing that I mentioned is internal monologues. So when I think of your internal [00:07:00] monologue when it comes to your mental health, I think of your thoughts, I think of your belief systems. I think about how you cope with emotions and your urges. There, of course, are more, but to kind of break it down into those four.

If you were to set a goal regarding your beliefs, this was something I did a lot, especially in early treatment. So I hit this belief system that I was not deserving of love from anyone, from everyone. It was just something that I really, truly believed and had a very negative impact on my self-esteem and my relationships and my, my self-love.

Everything was impacted by this belief system because if we're not deserving of love, we're not deserving of interactions or relationships or all these things that we, we interact with a lot on a daily basis and. Whenever I would have this belief system or thought connected to this belief system arise.

To give you an example, maybe I'd be walking to class and I would see a friend and they would like smile and wave, and my initial thought was like, oh, they don't actually wanna see me. Like they're just doing that because they have to, or it's because like you're, you're supposed to like smile and wave high or I wave first.

They're just doing it to be polite, but they don't [00:08:00] actually care about me. They're not actually smiling because they're excited to see me like that because they don't. And that, of course was likely false. We don't know for sure because we'll never know what other people are thinking, but you can assume that most people smile because they're excited to say hi to someone.

And so what I would do, as soon as I would have that thought, I would say no. And I would rewire the initial thought and say, this person was excited to see me and was saying hi because they were excited to say hi and liked that I smiled at them, whatever it was. And then I would even take that a step further.

Because I knew it connected to that core belief system. And I would say, and I'm deserving of relationships where I feel seen and loved and heard. And I am deserving of love. And I, I am loved by so many people in my life, and I am, I'm innately deserving of that, independent from anything that I do or say.

And that was a shift that I would make and like an affirmation almost that I would reaffirm on a daily basis. Another goal that you could set relating to your internal monologue is coping with [00:09:00] emotions. I think that this is a goal that anyone and everyone can set for 2023, no matter what you're navigating or trying to work through, everyone can benefit from improving their coping skills, whether it is learning new coping skills, or improving your ability to implement the coping skills you already have.

So maybe you're gonna set the goal of, I'm gonna learn a new coping skill once a week. Maybe it's from reading a book, listening to a podcast, learning one in therapy. Or maybe you're gonna say, I'm gonna practic. Two new coping skills every single week. So one week you're focusing on distraction and deep breathing.

Another week you're focusing on validation and asking for help. But setting goals based on learning and implementing those skills can be really, really effective. And you can even get more micro there. You can say once a day, I'm gonna practice deep breathing every Tuesday I'm gonna practice asking for help.

These little things that you can do to get good at the skill, and I've done a lot of episodes talking about this, especially mental health habits where one, you learn these skills and when you get really good at them and they become second nature or [00:10:00] routine or a habit. When you're struggling, you could almost go into autopilot and you can sit back and let your skills do the work because you know how to use them.

You've practiced them, and all you have to do is implement. You're not trying to learn, master and implement. You are just implementing and you know what to do and you know it works. So, Setting skills about working, that mental muscle of coping is really, really effective. And then the last area I mentioned in this internal monologue section is urges.

So I mentioned this in the Mental Health Habits episode, but I really do think of urges as a habit because when you've been engaging in an urge for a long period of time, you have kind of created a cycle or you have an emotional cue, maybe you feel anxious. And then the urge is, I wanna run away.

I want to avoid, because that's what the anxiety and fear tells us to do. And then the behavior is you leave the situation, you distract yourself, you avoid whatever it is that's stressing you out, and so it becomes a habit. It becomes a cycle.

And so a goal that you can set regarding urges is that when I have this emotional cue and I [00:11:00] have the urge I want to withdraw, you will then like rewire that and say, you know what? I know that when I avoid it makes me more anxious. And the anxiety builds over time. So instead, what I'm going to do is either use distraction for a short period of time, then reenter the situation in an effective way.

Or instead, I'm going to sit with this anxiety, do deep breathing, do an ice dive, whatever it is that you can do to sit with that emotion and use a different skill rather than avoiding so you're inserting yourself into that thought response, the urge and the behavior, and you're rewiring that in a more effective.

The next pillar I mentioned is your resources. And this in a lot of ways is tied to relationships, but not necessarily, and this goes hand in hand with learning new coping skills. So a lot of goals that you can set with your resources. Maybe you are gonna try to get into therapy this year. So the goal you could set is I'm gonna get a referral from my pediatrician, or I'm going to talk to my guidance counselor and get some names of therapists that they . Recommend.

Maybe you're gonna make your first appointment, all these little steps that are required to start therapy. Another idea of a [00:12:00] resource is I am going to make sure that I have the crisis phone number saved in my phone, so that if I ever need them, I can call them, or I'm gonna put together a crisis survival plan where it lists all of your safe people, your coping skills, numbers you would call if you are in crisis mode.

Another option here is to listen to new podcasts, read new books, really expand your mental health education and your toolkit. So there are so many things you can do with regard to increasing your resources that are available to you, and small goals you can set. Whether it's listening to a podcast every week, trying to read a new book and then mental health genre. My favorites are Lost Connections, building a Life Worth Living, and Atomic Habits. Those are three great places to start, and I'll leave those in the show notes, but there are so many different things that you can do to expand your resources that are available to you. So those are some different ways that you can set goals that are in your control, behaviors that you can plan and actually engage in that don't have to do with an outcome, like not being depressed, [00:13:00] not being anxious, not having a panic attack, having a healthy relationship. All of these things can be broken down into sub goals.

You can actually control and check off, did I do this? Yes or no?

And to kind of expand on that, there is an acronym that's taught in dbt. I don't think this is originally a DBT scale, but they teach it because it's so effective and that is setting a smart goal. So smart stands for a specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time bound. So you are being really specific about what your goal is. You are describing it factually. What exactly are you going to do? And if there are substeps, you are breaking those down as well. We want it to be measurable. I mentioned you can check it off, yes or no.

So you wanna make it a behavior that you are engaging in, like did. Say this affirmation, when this thought came up, did I use this coping skill? Did I read this book? It's like a yes or no kind of situation. Actionable, like I mentioned, it's not an outcome. You have to be able to take action towards your goal.

There has to be behavior that you are doing And what's also about helpful about having actual steps is that you can lay out [00:14:00] how long it's gonna take you to achieve your goal and exactly how you're gonna get there. R is for realistic. You want to make sure that you are setting a realistic timeframe.

And I told you guys, I struggle with this a lot. Like I like to set a lot of unrealistic goals and hope that they're gonna happen and they don't always do. So what you can do here is instead. You can run it by someone else. You can be like, is this realistic? You can listen to other people that are setting similar goals and seeing what they're recommending, especially an expert in that field.

So maybe if your goal is to, I don't know, if you were gonna run a 5k, you would maybe like download a running app or you would look up a running plan on Pinterest or something and you would see how quickly they're increasing their mileage and seeing like what the general standard is. Because if you were setting this goal and you were really unrealistic with your timeline, you're like, tomorrow.

I'm sure I could just mind over matter, run three miles, like I'm sure that's not what the general standard is. When you're training for a marathon, like you'd start slow, maybe you would do a walk a certain number of times a week. Maybe you would do a jog, maybe you would e wouldn't even focus on the length that you're running for, maybe the goal is to [00:15:00] just run for five to 10 minutes, whatever it is, try and check it with a friend, a family member, or someone else, just to make sure like your timeline is accurate and you're not trying to expect results too quickly. This also really does decrease stress and anxiety if you're not achieving that goal, which I talked about, that vicious cycle that can happen.

And the last thing is the timeline. You are setting an end date to this goal. I talked about this with final season, like if you have a lot to get done during finals week and you have all these tests you're studying for, and you're staying up later to get all these things done, there's a date that that ends because you can't do that forever.

Same thing with a goal. If you were gonna say like, I'm gonna be healthier, like there's no end date to that goal, but if you're gonna say, I'm going to try to go on a walk. For five out of seven days this week. That is a specific amount of time and you are getting very clear on what that goal is.

So you probably have heard of smart goals before in some capacity. I know it's a pretty basic framework, but it's a helpful reminder to have, especially if you wanna set yourself up for success with [00:16:00] your goals.

Hey there, I'm Naoto. Check out my show Tigress, which is basically my unfiltered and unapologetic journey of being a work in progress. Like I hope that I am authentic and I try to be as unfiltered as I possibly can. I am so passionate about what I do from talking about periods to wanting to build community around the cause to.

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Okay. The last part of this episode, I wanted to tell you a little bit about my goals for this year, and there are a lot of different things that I want to focus on.

I told you guys, I set a lot of goals. I tend to be very ambitious, but that's okay because what I do is when I look at my goals from the last year, which I did today for 2022, , I just kind of rolled them over. I'm like, I didn't do that last year. Well, I still am interested in pursuing that goal, so I'll try that this year.

A good example is like unplugging in the morning and unplugging before bed last year, I was like, I'm gonna unplug [00:17:00] after 9:00 PM and I'm gonna unplug for my phone for the first 30 minutes of the day. I don't think I did that any day of 2022, but I would still love to try and be more unplugged in the morning and at night.

So I'm gonna try that in 2023. And that's a great example of a goal that like was specific and actionable, but it wasn't very realistic because I am really far from that. Like I go to sleep watching a TV show, or I wake up with my phone alarm first thing in the morning. So to expect that I would immediately be able to unplug during those times a day probably isn't realistic.

I could start with a small step and be consistent with that for a long period of time. Do as I say, and not as I do. Anyways, my goals for this year, the first one is to increase my weekly workouts and daily steps. And I know that sounds vague.

I'll flesh it out more, don't worry. But the reason that I set this goal is that when I am getting seven to 10,000 steps a day, it means that I have gotten something done and I've been out and about. If I'm getting under that number, like if I'm getting. 1000 steps a day. [00:18:00] I've been in my dorm room all day or I've not done a single thing.

So if I'm getting that number of steps, I know I've done something. Maybe I've gone to the gym, maybe I've gone to get coffee and maybe I've seen a friend. It just means that I've done something with my day, other than being alone and doing nothing all day. So it's really great for my mental health and addition to my sleep schedule, my routine and productivity.

Just a really good external marker that I can measure cuz we're measuring with these smart goals.

The other reason that I set that goal is that there's so much research demonstrating the effects of exercise and mental health, and especially morning exercise and mental health on productivity and focus, and I know you guys have heard. At least one person be like, I love my morning workouts. I wake up at 5:00 AM I'm energized the whole day.

It's my favorite part of my day. I look forward to it. It's the best. It's my me time. That is not where I'm at. Like if I'm working out, it's at like 5:00 PM or 7:00 PM right now. I'm a night workout person and I might stay stick with that. This year I haven't decided, but I would like to at least really give morning workouts a shot and really get my sleep schedule to a point where I can wake up at that point in time [00:19:00] and see how I feel throughout the day having had that morning workout.

So that is a goal. There again, it needs to be flushed out because that's so vague how I'm gonna measure that. How am I gonna measure that? How is it actionable? Like, is it realistic? No, but there is the intention and I will flush it out. The next goal that I have is around the coping skills that I really wanna hone in and use on a daily basis this year.

And the four that I really wanna focus on are radical acceptance, loving, compassion wise, mind, and opposite action. Four skills are really at the core of D B T. There are a lot of D B T skills. If you've done D B T, you.

These ones are really essential and they reflect the mindfulness module. They reflect the, the Buddhist principles that Marsha Lenahan tried to incorporate because she found them to be so effective in her own life, and they just have so much benefit when you implement them routinely. You haven't heard them, I'll explain them briefly and maybe you can learn and implement them this year too.

So the first is radical acceptance. And the little [00:20:00] tagline for this is that you are accepting life on life's terms. Everything is as it should be, and everything is as it is. Freedom suffering requires acceptance from deep within of what is. Let yourself go completely with what is let go of fighting reality. Acceptance is the only way out of health. Pain creates suffering. Only when you refuse to accept the pain. Deciding to tolerate, and endure. The moment is acceptance.

Acceptance is acknowledging what is. To accept something is not the same as judging that it is good or approving. An acceptance is turning, suffering into pain that I can endure. So, so many different, like very intense. Complex ideas there, but what you're doing is radical acceptance is you are kind of picturing every single moment as a choice, you can either decide to accept or not accept the situation.

And so when you're not accepting, you're rejecting realities. You're saying like, I don't have to do this. This isn't fair. It's not, this isn't happening. And when you are accepting things, you don't [00:21:00] have to like it. You can make, this is terrible, this sucks, but this is what's happening and this is what I have to deal with.

So this is what I love about d b. is, you're always that given that choice, everything is in your control. Within, every moment there is a decision and an opportunity you can accept or reject reality. And with acceptance comes the ability to cope and be resilient and persist through those challenges.

So when you are accepting reality, you are making an inner commitment to accept and continue to. and you are doing this over and over and over again because accepting something isn't easy. You would sometimes have to go back to that decision many times and think of it from a lot of different angles.

And another really important thing to note here is that committing to accept is not necessarily accepting. It just turns you towards the path of acceptance, but it's the first step and you have to take that first step to get somewhere. So that is radical acceptance. It's a really amazing skill to have in your toolbox, whether it's with an interpersonal interaction, [00:22:00] things that you can't control, whether it's.

A decision related to your education or your career or something that you're interested in. All of these different things that we can't necessarily make happen, it the, the world will have an impact on radical acceptance is an amazing tool to weather those storms. The next skill is loving compassion.

Love and compassion is an exercise in D B T where you're almost meditating and. Sending compassion towards people in your life and you start with like people that you love. And if you love yourself, you do yourself as well. And then you slowly like work your way outwards in your circle to even people that like you really don't like.

And you are sending this, this compassion, this understanding, this validation and loving kindness towards them. And the other ways that I wanted to implement this in my life is giving people benefit of the doubt more often and incorporating small acts of kindness on a daily basis.

And especially in my thought pattern. So as I'm thinking about why someone might have made a decision, why they might have wanted to do something, when I'm about to [00:23:00] judge someone being like, okay, benefit of the doubt, maybe their day was crazy, or they're dealing with a lot right now. and also small acts of kindness on a daily basis.

There's a really amazing book about compassion that I read when I was at the Therapeutic boarding school I went to, and it was about a study done at Stanford where people implemented compassion in their lives and there was a correlation between doing. These acts of compassion to people in their life and the intensity of their depression and anxiety and mental health challenges that they were experiencing. And I noticed that when I have squawked of kindness or I do someone a favor, I help someone out, like I feel better.

I feel good. These acts of services for a lot of people is a love language and it makes you feel great. And so I want to try and implement that more on a daily basis because I don't wanna make me feel good. Maybe that's selfish, but it also has a huge impact on other people as well. And I mentioned my last skill.

If you haven't heard of Wise Mind before, it is like again, the core of D P T. You have your rational mind, which is logics and facts and anything that can [00:24:00] be externally observed. It's very task focused. And then you have your emotion mind, which is hot. It's mood dependent, it's emotion focused. And the perfect blend of these two things is your wise mind. And so it's the wisdom that's within each person. You are able to see the value of both reason and emotion.

You are bringing those left and right brains together and it's the middle path through every situation. And I do notice that when I'm in a challenging situation, I like sit and I'm like, okay, what is my wise mind telling me to do? And I really do try to balance those emotions in that reason.

But I want to try and do this more for the smaller things on a daily basis, really trying to balance both logic and emotion and making decisions from the most effective part of myself. And then the last skill that I mentioned is opposite action. We love opposite action, opposite action was what got me through my early days of treatment.

It's what got me out of my most severe moments of depression and anxiety, because when you do what your emotions are telling you to do on a really recurrent basis, things aren't going to change. It's when you do the opposite [00:25:00] that you see a shift in your mood and your thoughts, your relationships, all of these things.

So what you're doing when you're doing opposite action is you're changing your emotion by acting opposite to your current emotions. This is kind of like the C B T triangle where your thoughts, your emotions, and your behaviors are all connected, and if you adjust any part of that cycle, the rest will shift as well.

So to give you a couple of examples, if what you're feeling is fear, what you do instead of avoiding is you approach what you're afraid of over and over and over again. So you approach events, places, tasks, activities, and people that you're afraid of. You do these things to give yourself a con sense of control and mastery over the emotion.

And when you are overwhelmed and you're like, okay, like I know I should do this thing that I'm scared of, but it just really feels like too much at the moment. You make a list of small steps that you can do or tasks that get you closer to that goal. We're setting a smart goal. , and then you do that first thing on the list for guilt or shame.

When you are feeling guilty, you prepare the transgression. You say, sorry, you apologize. Because a lot of the times when we feel [00:26:00] guilty, you're ashamed. We wanna withdraw. We don't wanna interact with that person. We don't wanna face them, we just want to run away. And so, , you are facing them. You are apologizing, you're making it better.

You're repairing the relationship. You're committing to avoiding making that mistake in the future. You are accepting the consequences gracefully and then letting it go again. Shame and guilt like us to dwell. They like us to revisit the situation, so doing the opposite means letting it go and moving on with our lives.

For sadness or depression. You are doing the opposite by getting active and you are approaching the emotions rather than avoiding. When I think of avoiding depression, it's like you're getting into bed, you're pulling the covers up of your head, and you're not thinking about what you're experiencing, so you're gonna go towards it.

You're like, why am I feeling this way? You're kind of sitting in it for a moment, not to the point where you're ruminating on this depression, but you're not just avoiding everything in your life. You're actually going to take a handle on it and address these emotions that are causing you to feel depress.

And the other part of doing the opposite for sadness and depression is doing things that make you feel competent and self-confident. When we are [00:27:00] depressed, we withdraw from activities that we enjoy. We get less pleasure out of them, but having a sense of mastery and making ourselves feel confident helps decrease those feelings of depression.

And then lastly for anger, when we are angry, we want to go towards them. Unlike anxiety, what we want to avoid, we wanna like go towards the person and get everything said that we wanna say, and make sure they understand exactly why we're mad, and all the different reasons they were wrong. And you are right, but instead, you're gonna gently avoid the person that you're angry with rather than.

And that also means avoiding thoughts about the person rather than dwelling on them. You're also gonna do something nice rather than mean or attacking. And lastly, you're gonna imagine sympathy and empathy for the other person rather than blaming them. So this is an extremely powerful skill. Everyone can benefit from some opposite action.

and that's something that I wanna try to implement on a more daily basis. So the next goal that I have for this year is community. I want to continue to be involved in the clubs that I'm involved with at Penn. This is really great for my mental [00:28:00] health and feeling connected and engaged. I'm also rushing this year.

I rushed last year, but we're being persistent . Because I got dropped from a lot of them last year. So we're trying, again, trying to build that community. We are, instead of avoiding going towards things that make us anxious.

And then lastly, being intentional with my friendships and relationships that I have, that I love, that I enjoy. And continuing to strengthen those by spending time with people, validating, listening, being a good friend, all of these things that help those relat. then the next random goals that I'm just gonna go through really quickly that aren't necessarily as mental health related is to listen to more podcasts and audio books. I am a podcaster. I do social media management for podcasts. I should listen to podcasts more than I do, but I think it'll be a really fun way to feel more creative.

To get more inspiration and creativity about she persisted, and also just have a appreciation for the podcasting world and the community because there are so many great creators creating so many amazing shows. I also want to read more books, and I [00:29:00] know that a really great way to a decrease how much TV I'm watching, but also be able to read more when I can't be in front of a book is gonna be by listening to audiobook.

So I'm gonna try and do that more this year as well as reading more physical books, especially before bed I wanna listen to more music. My Spotify wrapped not this year, but last year was really bad. I like did not listen to a lot of music. This year's better. But I know that music improves my mood. It's not something that's fully part of my routine unless I'm like studying and working on something.

So I wanna listen to more music. Same as last year. I wanna do weekly episodes if she persisted, which I did a episode almost every single week last year, which I'm really, really proud of. So I wanna continue doing that. I want to save money. I am think I'm gonna try and do, I think my friend told me it was like the

30.

20, 30, 50 rule. So 50 is like, percent is for expenses, 30% is saving, 20% is investing. That might be so wrong, but something along those lines, because [00:30:00] I like spending money on Amazon and I'm bad at saving money. The next goal is to prioritize my sleep. Obviously I know what needs to be done for my sleep.

That goal is much more flushed out, but I wanna get a lot better with my sleep routine. Go to bed earlier, get up earlier, and I'm just still trying to like continue to get that pillar of my physical and mental health on lock. And it's not quite there yet, but we're getting closer. The next thing is to really start to make my morning routine something that I really enjoy and look forward to and have it be almost a ritual.

So having a lot of fun with my hair and my makeup and picking out my outfits and really making that something that I enjoy and is like time to myself, that's really fun for me. So making sure that I'm continuing to do that on a daily basis. And then the last thing that I put with a question mark. If you guys have been on the side of TikTok and just the wellness space in general where everyone is doing cold plunges and cold showers, I feel like if I get into my morning workout grind, that would be something that I'd probably do, but also that [00:31:00] sounds terrible, so I'm not fully committing to taking cold showers.

But it's good for your physical health, so maybe I'll try it. So those are a lot of my goals this year. I will make sure to check in. I'll probably do this episode again next year and let you know how things went. But I hope that was maybe some fun ideas. If you are struggling to set your goals for this year and want to improve your mental health, but dunno where to start with setting those goals.

I hope that all those tips were helpful and maybe you learned something and we'll set a similar goal for this year. So with that, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of She Persisted. If you enjoyed it, share with a friend or family member or on social media. If you share it on Instagram, I'll repost and give you a little shout out.

And thank you guys so much for listening to She Persisted. It makes it so much more fun to make episodes to have this community, and I really do appreciate each and every one of you. And yeah, with that, have a great week and I'll see you next Thursday because I changed our upload day to Thursday. So episodes come out on Thursday now and I'll see you then.

Sadie: Thank you so much [00:32:00] for listening to this week's episode of she persisted. If you enjoyed, make sure to share with a friend or family member, it really helps out the podcast. And if you haven't already leave a review on apple podcasts or Spotify, you can also make sure to follow along at actually persisted podcast on both Instagram and Tik TOK, and check out all the bonus resources, content and information on my website.

She persisted podcast.com. Thanks for supporting. Keep persisting and I'll see you next week.

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