I make the case for setting goals. Instead of allowing yourself to be blown in any direction like a weather vane. Setting and reaching towards goals if you ask me is one way to have joy and contentment in life.

It’s possible that a person can be truly happy watching TV all day every day for the rest of their lives. I’m not that person. I’m not going to judge a person who watches TV all day. I’m not going to judge a consumer who is insecure about their abilities in relation to people they think are superstars who have it easy.

This is my point exactly: life isn’t easy. Life can be hard at times. Life is hard for everyone even if they don’t let it show. Taking control by setting goals to work toward gives our lives a purpose and a power greater than our pain.

If you ask me there’s a benefit in “picking the brains” of successful people to see how they did it so that maybe we can learn from them and create our own success in our own way.

The point is that we don’t have to copy that person exactly. We can take ideas and translate them into our own mode.

One example is that I tear out fashion advertisements from magazines and insert them in a fashion binder. I won’t be able to replicate the exact look yet when I go in my closet I can create a similar look or mood with clothes I already own.

In this way too we can fashion a lifestyle that works for us. The Aveeno skincare advertisement tells us: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

This is what I’m saying: we can create a better life for ourselves when we take action every day in the direction of our dreams. That’s goal-setting in its simplest form. It can start by writing down a To-Do List–the simplest form of setting a one-day goal.

I wrote about goal setting at HealthCentral years ago. I’m no longer the HealthGuide there so I won’t link to those news articles. I will continue in here to pick up where I left off there.

Tennis champ Serena Williams I’ll quote here again:

“You have to believe in yourself when no one else does. That makes you a winner right there.”

Like I said it’s possible to start out with the mindset that you can achieve a goal instead of talking yourself out of doing something.

I believe it’s possible to have a full and robust life. I believe that people diagnosed with schizophrenia bipolar and other mental illnesses have the potential to create a better life for ourselves.

I’ll end here by saying that tearing pictures out of magazines is a great way to begin. If you want to move into your own apartment post where you can see it every day a photo of an apartment from an interior design magazine.

Creating a vision board is another way to visualize your goals. I’ll talk about this next.