Tips for Navigating Life Goals While Grieving

Many of us have goals and resolutions for the year ahead. But for those who are grieving the loss of a loved one, the prospect of making and keeping goals can feel overwhelming. It’s important to acknowledge and honor your feelings as you navigate this difficult time. However, it can also be helpful to find ways to move forward and create a sense of purpose in your life. In this article, Ok Healthy Living offers suggestions for setting achievable health goals, even as you continue to grieve.

Pursue a Long-Held Passion

Have you always wanted to work in a different career? This is your sign to take a leap and make that career change. Pursuing a career that more closely aligns with your goals and values will add meaning and purpose to your life. Start taking steps—however small—to work toward your dream career.

Crafting a stellar resume is essential to securing the job you want. To ensure a successful outcome, focus on making massive time efficiencies by organizing your skills and relevant experience clearly and concisely. Strategize about how to showcase the accomplishments that are most pertinent to the position in question and capture a hiring manager’s interest. You could use a resume builder to design a memorable resume. Choose a template and simply add in your own copy, fonts, photos, and colors.

Focus on Self-Care

While many people set life goals that are strict and require significant self-discipline, you may be better off sticking with gentle self-care goals in grief. Set goals that will help you cope today rather than focusing on long-term rewards. Here are a few healthy self-care goals from JoinCake.com that will improve your physical and mental health immediately:

• Spend time outside as often as possible.
• Move your body for at least 30 minutes every day, even if just for a walk.
• Fuel yourself with nutritious foods.
• Pick up a relaxing hobby.
• Reach out to friends and family.

It’s also important to get enough sleep while you’re grieving, so establish a relaxing evening routine to improve your sleep quality. Updating your bedding to make it more comfortable and conducive to healthy sleep is one way to accomplish this. For example, you can add stylish new pillow shams to match with your duvet and sheets. It’s possible to find unique pillow sham patterns created by independent artists from around the world. Go online to find your own pillow sham.

Surround Yourself with Support

Surrounding yourself with friends and family can make it easier to stick to your goals when you’re going through a difficult time. Supportive family members will offer encouragement and accountability, helping you stay on track. At the same time, your loved ones can provide practical support, such as help with tasks or errands or suggestions for resources that will help you achieve your resolutions.

Find Ways to Honor Your Loved One Like Starting a Nonprofit

It can be challenging to focus on your own needs when you’re grieving the loss of a loved one. Honoring your loved one is a great way to strike a balance between self-care and selflessness in grief. For example, make a resolution to do or try something that your loved one enjoyed, like joining a book club if they loved reading. Here are a few other ideas from Better Places Forests:

• Volunteer or give back in some way that was meaningful to your loved one.
• Sign up for a class to learn more about a topic that interested your loved one.
• Share your loved one’s memory with others by writing about your experiences with them.
• Consider finishing projects started by your loved one.
• Set goals that encourage you to live your life to the fullest.

Starting a nonprofit to honor a beloved deceased loved one can be a massive undertaking, but if done right, it can not only help with the healing process but also offer massive time efficiencies. A properly planned and administered nonprofit organization can represent your fond memories of your lost loved one while fostering their legacy in the world through meaningful impact. Forming a nonprofit corporation will improve your eligibility for grants and funding.

Be Kind to Yourself

When it comes to goals, both short term and long term, we can be really hard on ourselves. But self-care and self-compassion are key to achieving your goals, especially when you’re navigating grief. Despite common belief, self-compassion can be more motivating than self-discipline. Self-compassion can help you stay on track toward your goals while diminishing performance anxiety, procrastination, and the fear of failure that holds so many of us back.

Making life goals can be a helpful way to set them and focus on self-improvement, even in the face of loss. Going back to school to make a career change can be a great way to do this, as it allows you to invest in your future and pursue a new path that better aligns with your goals and interests. Just remember to be gentle with yourself and take your goals one step at a time.