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Setting a Life Goal

Overview
Let's review first!
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Here we move from the “Consider” phase to the “Choose” phase. The practitioner has already worked with the participant to discover their willingness and preparedness to participate in the Psychiatric Rehabilitation process and may have completed some readiness development activities (as needed).
The participant has decided on a goal environment related to living, learning, working or socialization and is now ready to work on choosing a specific life goal related to that area or domain.
Here you will support someone with gaining clarity about what is important to them and the various options available to them.

Foundational Concepts

The Psychiatric Rehabilitation practitioner continues to use both orienting and active listening skills to partner with the participant throughout each step of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation process. The concepts and skills of active listening and orienting are fundamental to Psychiatric Rehabilitation. Click below to learn more about the steps to the skills of orienting and active listening.

Orienting
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Active Listening
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Orienting 

Steps include:

  1. Name the activity
  2. Show the participant what the process looks like by showing an example and explaining it.
  3. Discuss how it might be helpful to the participant.
    Identify what the participant can expect the practitioner to do; and
  4. Identify what the participant will be asked to do in order to successfully participate.
  5. Ask the participant to repeat back, in their own words, what they heard you explain.

Active Listening

Steps include:

  1. Includes all three skills associated with empathically responding to the participant’s perspective.

  2.   a. Listening for content (i.e. What they said)

      b. Listening for feeling (i.e. “Sounds like you’re feeling….is that correct?”

      c. Listening for feeling and meaning (i.e. “Sounds like you’re frustrated and don’t want to live there anymore, is that correct?”)

  3. The practitioner checks in with the participant to ensure they have accurately understood the participant’s perspective.

  4. Practitioner avoids advice giving, judging, or directing the conversation away from the participant’s perspective.

Three (3) Step Process to Setting a Life Goal

person writing

Step 1: Listing Personal Criteria

Identifying 5-10 characteristics that someone wants to have in an ideal role or setting in the domain they are focused on.

Step 1: Analyze Personal Experience: 

Work collaboratively to examine reactions to the people, places, and activities that the participant  has experienced (i.e., Amal feels unhappy that he has roommates that he doesn’t get along with -people. Amal feels worried that he needs help doing his laundry-activities. Amal feels satisfied with having his own bedroom-place).

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Step 2: Identify Future Preferences: Work together to identify the characteristics of the preferred setting- what the person wants for the future.

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Step 3: Name the Criteria: Translate the future preferences into a concise phrase that captures the valued quality in each characteristic of the setting or role.

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Once the domain(s) of dissatisfaction are identified, the individual rates their readiness on a scale using low, medium, and high. The practitioner then partners with the individual to discuss the participant’s desire to continue with the process of pursuing a life goal.

Listing Personal Criteria Activies

Activity: Analyze Personal Experiences (Step 1)

  • Work with the participant to examine their reactions to the people, places, and activities that they have experienced.

Activity: Identify Future Preferences (Step 2)

  1. Explore the implications of the person’s reactions to their current and past environments. 
  2. Identify the person’s 3-5 general values either through values clarification exercises or by exploring the reasons for the person’s reactions to their environments. 
  3. Cross check the list of future preferences to see how many values are met in those preferences. 
  4. Expand the list of preferences if some values are not represented.

Activity: Name the Criteria (Step 3)

  1. Review the list of future preferences.
  2. Identify the particular characteristic of the setting/role that the person wants.
  3. Identify the quality of that characteristic that reflects what the person wants in that environment.

Step 2: Describing Alternative Environments

The process of describing alternative options by collecting comprehensive information about the possible options in the domain the participant is focused on (living, learning, working, socializing)

This is the process of describing alternative options by collecting comprehensive information about the possible options in the domain the participant is focused on (living, learning, working, socialization) (icon living environment, working environment, learning environment and socialization environment)

Benefits:

  1. The process helps to educate the person about how the real-world options that the person qualifies for are different from one another.
  2. The outcome helps reduce the number of surprises confronting the person when they are making the decision about a goal, or later, when they are entering the environment.

There are three activities, each with three steps in Describing Alternative Environments. Click below for more information.

  • Activity 1: Specify Alternative Options
  • Activity 2: Clarify Relevant Characteristics
  • Activity 3: Research Options 

Describing Alternative Environments Activies

Activity: Specify Alternative Options

*Possible choices for a satisfying role and setting from a pool of possibilities.

  • Step 1: Identify initial paraments to help the participant carve out a pool of possible options to consider. 
  • Step 2: Eliminate the environments which have exclusionary entry requirements that a person does not meet.
  • Step 3: Confirm the remaining total of 3 or 4 options, including the current environment for comparison.

Activity: Clarify Relevant Characteristics

*Explaining in concrete terms the important features that differentiate alternative environments. This helps the participant to understand what to look for when learning about each option. 

  • Step 1: Choose 8-15 characteristics that anyone would want to know about the type of options you are going to research in order to be informed. 
  • Step 2: Include the list of personal criteria if you have it. 
  • Step 3: Define characteristics in measurable terms. What will you be collecting information about for each (i.e., if being close to the park is important this might be “not farther than a 10-minute walk to the park.”)

Activity: Research Options 

*Collecting information about the characteristics of each of the alternative environments. Describing helps the person know exactly what each of the options is really like. 

  • Step 1: Formulate research questions based on the definitions of each of the characteristics (i.e., How long is a walk to the nearest park?) 
  • Step 2: Develop a research plan by identifying the method of collecting information, who the participant will be collecting it from, and when (i.e., use Google maps to see how long the walk to the nearest part is, within a week, with the help of my best friend Joe.)
  • Step 3: Identify how the information will be recorded (i.e., keep a notebook of options and answers to my questions.)
women thinking

Step 3: Deciding on a Life Goal

Making a choice about which role and setting is going to be the most satisfying fo the participant to achieve in the next 6-24 months. This process supports the person to weigh each piece of information they have collected across each option to identify a role and setting that will be most satisfying. It directs the focus of the Getting and Keeping phase. There are three steps in Deciding on a Life Goal!

There are 3 steps involved in Deciding on a Life Goal. Click below for more information. 

  • Step 1: Define the criteria 
  • Step 2: Rate the options
  • Step 3: Confirm the choice

Deciding on a Life Goal Activies

Activity: Define the Criteria (Step 1)

Describing exactly how the quality of the characteristic will be measured in the decision and involves determining how much of the quality is favorable and how important the quality is to the whole decision. (i.e., adequate pay=the dollar amount/week the person is paid. Ideally, I would like $900/week. I will accept up to $700/week. Less than $700 is unacceptable.)

  1. Review the participant’s list of personal criteria to ensure the criteria important to making the choice are the only criteria there.
  2. Write a definition of the criteria that can be measured.
  3. Create a favorability scale (i.e., ideal, acceptable, unacceptable) that identifies how much of the criteria has to be present.
  4. Identify the criteria that are the most important of all, the least important and the middle importance and then fill in the rest.
  • Worksheet 8: Define the Criteria (need hyperlink)

Activity: Rate the Options (Step 2)

  • Deciding on how well the alternative environments match the participant’s personal criteria.

    1. Compare the information you collected in the favorability scale and identify how much of each personal criteria exists in each option, including the current environment.
    2. Multiply the rating you gave each criteria by how important that criteria is to you, or its weight.
    3. Add up the scores for each column representing the importance and favorability of all the personal criteria in each option.
    • Click here to go to Step 3 in Setting a Life Goal (Confirm the Choice) (Slide 22)

Activity: Confirm the Choice (Step 3)

  • Validate that the top scoring option is the one to keep as the selection of the life goal.

    1. Compare the ideal option by multiplying the weights for each criteria by a favorability level of 5 and adding up the resulting scores.
    2. Identify the top scoring option and compare it to the ideal to see if it’s at least 2/3 of the ideal.
    3. If not, review, your calculations. You may want to try to modify any criteria that can be modified.
    4. Review the choice with significant others whom the participant relies on or whose option is important.
    5. Explore support for the goal and negotiate the differences if necessary.
    6. Formulate the final goal statement.

Key Points of Setting a Life Goal

Deciding the Life Goal is a process merging external facts and internal experiences and feelings to select a role, setting, and timelines that have the best chance of being satisfying to the person.
Key Point
Key Point1
It involves describing what is important to the person, from the person’s point of view and then weights and rates each option accordingly based on collected, verified information. The process uses words and numbers to organize a person’s feelings about what’s important and whether it is present or not, in an option.
Key Point
Key Point 1
Numbers are symbols. If in the end, the person feels uneasy or disappointed in their top scoring choice—the process calls for reviewing the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the criteria, the weights assigned, the scaling, the research --and then revises the numbers to fit the person’s feelings better. After these revisions, recalculate and check the person’s reaction to the top choice.
Key Point
Key Point3
Exploring the choice with others is up to the person whose decision it is. If they want support from significant others, or need their assistance, or find it important to learn their perspective on a particular decision, then arriving at a final statement that they can support is important.
Key Point
Key Point4
Use the profile worksheet to work with someone to identify personal perspectives and knowledge about change, asking questions that will lead to a rating of low, medium, or high. This information will help you to identify areas for readiness development. The end result of this exploration will be a summary profile of the rating the participant gives themselves on each factor and an overall decision about what to do next-develop readiness, go ahead and set a goal,or not continue with Psychiatric Rehabilitation but use another service or activity.
Key Point
Key Point5
Those individuals may or may not be the same ones whose opinions need to be explored in another decision or Life Goal. There may also be no significant others from whom the person would like support. If others are not “gatekeepers” (i.e., determine entry or exit from an option) then the person may not need to consult significant others.
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Key Point6

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