Begin With the End in Mind

It is impossible to find success if you don’t start out with a clear vision of what you are trying to achieve. Sometimes people don’t know what they want and choose to adopt the wishes and desires of other people because it is easier than deciding for themselves. 

But just as bad is when a person doesn’t clarify what they want. Most people say they want to be happy, but happiness is a vague and subjective term that means something different to everyone. Even if you simplify happiness and say it consists of the basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter, etc., there is still a lot of difference amongst people in terms of what and how much of each they think they need to be happy. 

Having a specific goal in mind that you can measure and track your progress towards gives you a daily routine to follow. It gives structure and order to your existence because you know what you are working towards. It also tells you when the journey is over, which is just as important. One of the qualities that successful people share that is not talked about enough is their ability to recognize when it is time for something to end. When it is time to change directions and embark on a new journey, a moment that usually comes well before the majority of people realize it. They keep the end in mind even when they start, because they realize that a decision not to plan for change, for the time when something is over and done with, is a decision to court stagnancy and complacency. It’s deciding, in essence, to fail. 

The end goal in therapy might involve helping a person resolve whatever issues initially brought them to therapy, or being able to accomplish the goals outlined in a plan of care. Most people come to therapy with a combination of the two, some things they want less of in their lives, and other things they want more of. Therapy is such a dynamic process that inevitably new issues will surface throughout sessions and new goals will be formulated beyond the initial ones. This can make it difficult to determine when therapy has come to an end. There’s a fine line between needing to continue helping someone with new problems as they organically arise, and looking for problems to avoid having to say goodbye. The latter could be considered a form of self-sabotage. 

For that reason, I judge therapy to be over when a person is living the life they want to live, paradoxes and all. This means they have resolved or gotten control of most if not all of the problems they initially came to therapy for, and they have accomplished their personal goals. Having this end in mind at the very beginning helps to guide the therapeutic process.