Helpful Resolutions For Professional Caregivers Include Defining Doable Goals And Implementing Steps To Achieve Them
A new year is beginning. Pegasus skilled in-home caregivers in Los Angeles and elsewhere avoid making lofty resolutions that create guilty feelings later. Our career home health care nurses prefer helpful resolutions for professional caregivers that are achievable.
Many individuals promise themselves to:
- Be kinder to others
- Exercise more
- Improve their diet
- Lose weight
- Save money
There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-improvement goals like these. But few people make lasting changes. They often make these same or similar resolutions each new year.
Experts have devised techniques that help you achieve any goal. One of the most important is to break a large goal into clear-cut steps. For example, rather than an ambiguous desire to save money:
- Decide on an amount that’s reasonable to save each week or month
- Open a savings account
- Deposit your predetermined amount each time period
- If necessary, give up some luxury or frivolous expenditure to make each deposit
- Congratulate yourself for each deposit
The idea is to have a specific goal, such as having a certain amount saved by the end of the year. Then make it happen with specific amounts at specified times. Achieving a goal by incremental steps applies to almost all types of resolutions.
Resolve To Put Self-Care First
You are a professional caregiver. Your advice to others is usually to take care of themselves first. You remind them that they can’t adequately care for others without self-care.
So how about resolving to become “your own best caregiver?” One significant advantage of being a Pegasus home health care nurse is that you set your schedule. So start with not overbooking yourself.
That allows you to spend more time with family and friends. Those interactions can potentially help you relax and laugh more. Taking pleasure in your life is one of the pillars of good self-care.
Invest in yourself with “me time.” Resolve to set aside a specified amount of time each week or day for yourself. Additionally, decide which of your lifestyle habits need improvement and implement specific steps for modifying them.
Resolve to tend to your own health. Make time to see your optometrist, your dentist, and your doctor at least once a year. Make time for your spiritual health, and seek professional counseling for your emotional health if needed.
Resolve to ask family members for help with household chores and errands. Resolve to participate in healthcare professionals’ support groups. Most are mutually beneficial.
Resolve To Take It One Step At A Time
When you’re considering habits you want to change, consider why you developed those habits in the first place. Many of the lifestyle choices you make, while potentially unhealthy, have a payoff in pleasure. Until you understand why you do what you do, your chances of not doing it are slim.
Choose one habit you want to change and resolve to spend the time and energy needed to change it. Find a healthy substitute and implement it one step at a time. Avoid trying to change every undesirable activity all at once.
Striving to change a bad habit is admirable. However, don’t forget to include positive resolutions. Start with giving yourself credit for doing meaningful work.
Resolve To Keep Your Goals Doable
Resolve to look for silver linings even as you remain realistic about the dark clouds. That usually involves cultivating optimism. Doing so increases your ability to meet challenges and cope with life’s stressors.
Resolve to remember that you are human. Resolve to accept that you are not perfect. You are doing your best, so resolve to let go of guilt and self-judgment if you make a mistake.
Resolve to accept that there are some things that you cannot control. No matter how hard you try, you cannot improve every situation. Trying to fix the unfixable only leads to stress and burnout.
Avoid making unrealistic resolutions or ones in which your goal is perfection. The best goals are challenging but not impossible. Try to keep in mind the “big picture” of who you are and what makes your life meaningful.
Generally, writing out your resolution(s) increases your success rate. There are plenty of templates that can help you get started. Or try something like the following:
I, your name, resolve to your goal by week, month, year. I will accomplish this by completing step 1, step 2, step 3 . . . each time period. My milestones are interim accomplishments for which I will reward myself with something special.
Post this where you frequently see it. Despite having objectives and steps to guide your progress, a resolution is not a to-do list. Avoid combining them.
And if you can be kinder to others, exercise more, improve your diet, lose weight, or save money, go for it. Resolve to make this year the year you keep those resolutions.
Pegasus is a licensed Home Care Organization and a Joint Commission Accredited Home Health Care organization. Our professional in-home caregivers in Los Angeles and our other locations strive to improve the quality of life for others. As career home health care nurses, they make professional and personal resolutions that help them provide skilled services.
