As we start a new year full of opportunity, expert goal setters have revealed their top five tips to achieving life goals in 2019.
The organisation’s ethos is built around personalised rehabilitation plans for brain injury survivors to rebuild their lives. It involves setting goals with individuals that are important to them, so they are motivated to achieve them despite the ups and downs of rehabilitation which takes time.
According to Acquired Brain Injury Ireland, learning how to rebuild our lives and reset goals is not just for brain injury survivors – it’s good for everyone to revisit their life goals as life plans are constantly evolving.
Communications Manager with the national brain injury charity, Caroline Cullen said: “We’ve all set goals that seem perfectly good but somewhere along the way we’ve lacked the motivation to achieve them and the goals fall by the wayside. With our brain injury survivors, we know it’s important that goal setting is aligned to the person’s own sense of purpose, so they are motivated to make progress, one step at a time. And the same thinking applies to you too.
“When we develop personalised plans for brain injury survivors to rebuild their lives, we look at the whole person - who they are, what they are good at, what do they like, what interests them? These are useful questions to ask yourself. Aligning goals to your own sense of purpose and sense of soul is crucial to your success. Anything else and you’re less likely to put the effort in and stick to it.”
Acquired Brain Injury Ireland’s Top 5 Tips to Achieve Your Goals in 2019:
Know your purpose – choose goals that are in line with your own sense of being and purpose and truly fits with who you are.
Look at your goals every day – writing them down where you can see them makes them real and is an important reminder to stay on track.
Find a goal buddy – being accountable to someone is crucial to success. Our brain injury survivors work with rehabilitation assistants who help them track their progress to achieve their goals.
Your goal must be important to you – any goal worth achieving is full of ups and downs, just like rehabilitation. It has to be important to you, so you can remind yourself that the commitment and effort is worth it.
Know the barriers – every plan meets obstacles along the way. By thinking about barriers from the start you can be prepared to take the rough with the smooth and stay on course to achieve your goals.
Ms Cullen concluded: “As we head into a new year it’s a good time to check in with ourselves, to ensure we give our best effort to what is most important to us. Regaining independence is at the heart of what is important to our brain injury survivors and many of their goals are things the rest of us take for granted. Their goals often include things like: being able to cook a meal; shop independently; manage their own money; return to work or college or to be able to mind their child for an hour without any help. Like our brain injury survivors, this New Year is an opportunity to look at what’s important to you and start rebuilding your life around those goals.”
Acquired Brain Injury Ireland is the country’s leading provider of community rehabilitation for those of working age (18-65 years ) living with and recovering from an acquired brain injury. At any one time, the national not-for-profit organisation delivers dedicated individual rehabilitation and support to 1,100 brain injury survivors and their families, to rebuild their lives.
As many as 19,500 brain injuries happen in Ireland every year from causes including stroke, road traffic accidents, falls and assaults. That’s 53 people every day – men and women of all ages – acquiring a brain injury that can affect their lives and those of their family for months and years after the initial injury.
If you found this useful and would like to help more brain injury survivors achieve their goals in 2019, join our Never Say Never Club on www.abiireland.ie/donate
