Setting Goals for the New Year

The New Year is here and it’s time to take stock of where we have come from and what we want to achieve in 2015. .

• You may be celebrating new milestones- such as being seizure free, obtaining a drivers’ license, getting a job, or making new friendships.
• For some, it’s been a very hard year – maybe you have recently been diagnosed with seizures and just starting your journey. Or maybe you lost a loved one to epilepsy – an infrequent but very real complication of living with epilepsy. 
• No matter what kind of year you had in 2014, the Epilepsy Foundation and epilepsy.com can be a resource for you in 2015.  It’s important to celebrate the smaller but very important things about your health, yourself, your family and friends.  Please remember to stay connected to a community.

Looking back at our progress helps us think about where we want to go or what we’d like to achieve in the future. 

• Did you make progress last year? If not, what do you need to keep working on those goals?
• Were the goals realistic and achievable? Sometimes we don’t reach our goals because they weren’t realistic at this time in our life.
• Were the goals specific enough? Often we set goals that are too vague and don’t spell out how to reach them.  For example, “ I want to be seizure free”. This is a great goal, but there are many steps involved in becoming seizure free.  A more specific goal would be easier to work towards.
  • For example, a person who has seizures only when sleep deprived may strive to improve sleeping habits and decrease seizures associated with sleep.
  • A person who is going through a workup for epilepsy surgery may do best to break the process down into workable goals. First, one needs to work with the health care team to see if he or she is a surgical candidate and get through the first phase of testing. Then one can think about potential outcomes of surgery.

Setting goals is not just a New Year’s endeavor. It’s something we all should be doing on a regular basis. Goals can also address all aspects of life. Consider goals to improve your health, your home or work life, or your connections and community. Don’t forget fun things too.  We all need to laugh and love, no matter how tough life can get.

For More Information, visit

• Managing My Epilepsy for information and strategies for self-management in epilepsy
• Setting Priorities and Taking Action – for help setting goals

Thank you for being part of our epilepsy.com community and best wishes for the New Year!

Patty Osborne Shafer RN, MN
Associate Editor/Community Manager
Epilepsy.com