Tag: goals

Goals and Limitations

Posted on by Monique Barrett

I’m always so tired. From when I wake up to when I go to bed, I am tired. Due to this exhaustion, it feels like I can never achieve what others can achieve in a day, so I’m hardly ever productive and I beat myself up for it. But I must remember that we all have unique limitations. My limitation is constant tiredness and a productive person’s limitation could be stress or a need to rest that they always ignore. We all need to work with what we got, because our successes are always different to others’. We also need to acknowledge that people often present only their best selves and therefore hide their true life or limitations to the public, especially on social media.

We need to accept ourselves and alter what we perceive as successful or productive. We have to change our goals to be more realistic and not judge ourselves for that. Because my disabilities mean I stay home a lot, I’ve made a change to my unrealistic to-do list. My main goal at the moment is to develop a routine in my life – wake up earlier, make the bed, eat three meals a day and go to bed earlier too. A good idea is to implement our reasonable goals in stages. When making a change in your life as a person with limitations, things are a lot harder than it seems to others. Celebrate your successes and progress, no matter how small they are. Break down the real value of each achievement without judgement or comparing to others.

A goal of mine is to go out at least once a week. That might seem ridiculously small to people with a job or those who love or need to go outside, but it’s a big deal to me due to a mix of conditions I have. For one, it drains my energy twice as much than when I’m at home. These little victories can have great benefits for your mental and physical health, and our relationships with people and the world. When I wake up early (for me) I will have more time in the day to be my kind of productive. When I read every night it will inspire me to be creative and allow me to use my brain. If I eat three meals a day (even if it is microwavable, if you can’t cook like me) I will have more energy and it will stop me from snacking. If I do some kind of art often, then it will really help with my mental health, skill improvement and journey to become a professional artist. Introduce new goals at a slow pace, because that way you will be less likely to become overwhelmed if you expect yourself to do too many things at once. Once again, don’t judge your own capabilities and your speed towards all of your goals. You are successful as you are.

What I did to work out what to do was writing in my journal all of my short term goals. Then I highlighted the goals that are reasonable to introduce now or soon. Bonus points if they are beneficial to you or others. Write down all the highlighted goals again, then repeat the highlighting and making a new list process until you have one to three reasonable goals. The hope is to not completely give up, but to also remember that it’s okay to not perfectly do everything and have a break. And celebrate starting a goal and being in the process of making it a part of your routine (if it is reoccurring) or completing it (if it’s a one off goal). And only when you are ready to add a new goal, look at your reasonable goals list again and start one to three new ones, depending on how big they are.

Be kind to yourself! Having limitations, whatever they may be, is completely normal and fully okay. Most if not all people who seem successful struggle too. Your life is yours, so comparing yourself to others is not helpful. We are all successes, just our own success is unique.

Here’s to reasonable goals!

Stepping Towards Goals

Posted on by Monique Barrett

Let’s imagine you have a garden at the back of your home. (And if that’s impossible, then let’s imagine you live in a different home.) In this garden you have a world full of possibilities. You can choose what to plant, such as vegetables, fruit or flowers, or nothing at all. You can choose how often you tend to it, when you harvest it and what to do with your harvest. Or perhaps you don’t want a garden at all, so you let it go wild or change the space into something else. Even though people have an idea of a “successful” garden, there really is no right or wrong. People have different priorities and ideas of success.

A garden has no “ending” or finish line. You have little victories like when your plants grow to fruition, or when a dying flower bounces back, but a garden can always be worked on or continued. That’s a really useful way to think about your mind’s growth – there is no final goal, only immediate ones. So what are your priorities? Mine would be family, art, love, human rights, emotional intelligence, LGBTQI+ issues, platonic and romantic relationships, and mental health. My goals therefore would be:

  • Create art often and work on improving my ability
  • Earn money as an artist and one day become a professional artist
  • Keep a good relationship with my parents, sister and partner
  • Put in effort to maintain friendships (which can be hard for me)
  • Act in love as much as possible
  • Always be open to learning, especially in topics I’m passionate about (emotional intelligence, feminism, racism, LGBTQI+ issues, mental health and disability)
  • Be someone that acts in align of my values
  • Create my heART Project
  • Become an art therapist

I have used many pages in my journal to write down my goals, and I do that often. (I love lists!) By periodically writing down my goals, I refine them over time until I am certain of what is important to me and how I’d like to continuously cultivate my garden. Just like if you had a physical garden, try to visualise your dream self and life and what little steps could be taken to go in the right direction. Don’t focus too much on the “final” goal yet, because your goals will hopefully always get bigger as you go along in life. Also, if you focus on your final goal too much, it might seem too large, unattainable and overwhelming. The most important thing is to think about what path to take – what path mirrors your values and dreams? What actions can you take to step in the right direction?

The way I do it is that I write down a list of my major goals and then I write a list of the specific things I have to do to attain that goal. It’s okay if you don’t exactly know what to do, just write down a rough idea. Then, write a list on things you can do now and only focus on those, building on them as you tick things off. Here’s an example:

Major Goal

I want to become a professional artist. This means I want to support myself financially with my art and have it as my full-time job.

specific goals

  • Learn from others on how to improve my art
  • Create art I think is good enough to sell
  • Create an audience that might be interested in supporting my work
  • Save up for and buy equipment that will help my art process (for example, a paper trimmer/guillotine)
  • Create an Etsy store where I can sell originals, stickers and prints
  • Advertise that my commissions are open

SPECific goals for now

  • Try to draw or paint everyday
  • Watch YouTube videos such as art tutorials, studio vlogs, and speed paints from artists I want to be like
  • Buy sticker paper and practice printing my designs on it
  • Post your art that can be bought (like prints and commissions) on facebook for your friends
  • Invite friends over to do art together to keep motivated
  • Create and upload artworks on an art Instagram page

And there’s a lot more. You can create a list for even more specific small goals too, and you can do that as many times as you’d like. Remember to keep them realistic! The point is to start working on your garden now without being too overwhelmed by seemingly unattainable goals. If you put it off, your produce will just get rotten, so to reach our major goals, you need to maintain it now. Little steps are so important. Don’t judge your progress or compare it to others, because most likely they are doing the exact same thing, and that’s not helpful for anyone. Don’t judge your pace or your mistakes – you are doing exactly what you need to be doing.

If you have realised your values and goals in life, you are already successful. The hard part is to start and continue on your path. Focus on what you can do now, continuously act on your dreams as they grow and know that you can do whatever you want with your garden. Keep walking forward, even after mistakes and knock-backs, because every step is essential.

If you could get anything from this blog post, then let it be this:

“What can you do now?”

The Future You

Posted on by Monique Barrett

At school, teachers at some point ask us, “Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?” or, “What is your dream job?” My dad and I have been preparing for my future for years. When I was little, I wanted to be a pop star like Miley Cyrus, but after realising I couldn’t sing, dad said I should go for a career that guarantees a job. At some points of my life I’d dreamt of being an author, an artist, a game creator, a script writer, or a movie director. I mainly kept these dreams hidden, because I really wanted to impress my family, others and myself. I had no doubt that I was going to finish high-school and I believed I definitely would go to university. I was going to have an impressive job like an engineer, doctor, lawyer, optometrist and the list goes on. I love my dad – I know he wanted me to have a good life without worrying about money and he believed in me so much that he thought I could get any job.

As much as I wanted to impress myself and others, my heart just wasn’t in it. I didn’t dare to try to be an artist, because people told me that art could only be a hobby. It was when I was 16 that everything changed. After my attempt I was in a psychiatric ward where I was extremely self destructive and I didn’t want a future at all. All I wanted was to die. That experience changed me – I was afraid of leaving the house, because I would be overwhelmed and have panic attacks for a long time after coming home from the ward. I knew that I couldn’t go back to school, because of fear and anxiety, so I felt crushed when I became someone I’d never guessed I’d be – a high-school dropout. I was in the Boxhill ward when when my family said they would support me if I wanted to be an artist. I was so emotional when I was given this support to be someone I always wanted to be inside .

5 years ago I would never expect that my life would be the way it is. It is so scary to think about the future. People focus so much on what career we have and not who they are as a person. When thinking about the future, you can be so obsessed with the outcome that you never end up doing it. I find this particularly hard since I’m impatient and I often have my head stuck in the clouds. I write down so many goals of what I’d like to do and because my vision is always looking at the future, I end up not doing it in the now. The thing about being in the now is that you can see our current status. Our morals, values, beliefs and identity can be pulled apart and analysed. Are you satisfied with who you are? Do your actions reflect your values or what you find important? What parts do you wish to accept? What parts need to grow or change?

I know that picking yourself apart isn’t always kind. In fact, it can be extremely hard to accept it or see it. If you are not ready to do this, that’s okay. But when people ask you, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I believe what is more important than your job, status in society or how much money you have, is who you are. Five years is a long time and people change. What kind of person do you wish to change to? Someone who is more generous? Kinder? Someone who has broken through hating yourself to loving yourself? Rather than asking, “What is your dream job?” we should ask, “What do you dream to become?” Loving yourself and who you are as of now is important, but the moment you don’t want to change at all is the moment you stop growing. Growth is so important and we should all open ourselves to it.

I ask myself, “What do you want to be in the future?” and my answer is to be more mindful and loving. What about you? What do you want to be?

The heART Project

Posted on by Monique Barrett

Hear, read, watch, play.

Those four words embody the massive project that I am creating called The heART Project – an experience that is a wholesome and honest blend of art and mental health. It will be expressed through many different mediums, creating a whole experience that you can hear, read, watch and play. It’s a love letter to art, a hand that reaches out to support people with mental illnesses and an experience that I am putting my whole heart into.

It will be an art book, show, game and soundtrack.

  • The book is filled with words, comics, poetry, short stories, art, puzzles, mindful and grounding exercises and more.
  • The show has episodes featuring animated stories, drag performances, short films, artwork tutorials, original theatre productions, etc.
  • The project will have a game that involves different kinds of gameplay such as a 2D adventure game, 3D puzzles, a RPG, therapeutic point and click, real choices that influence the story and more.
  • And lastly, the soundtrack will have songs about mental health and art, a podcast featuring different kinds of artists and activists, an audio book of The heART Book, grounding exercises, spoken word, meditative music and the list goes on.

This is not a tiny task. This is going to be worked on and created over many years as I grow as a person and artist. It will face scary walls, bumps on the road and many obstacles, but that will make it all the more valuable – at least to me. I really hope that someone will get something out of this project – my goal is to give my heart to those who need it, because two years ago I really needed someone to do that for me.

I want you to be part of this process, so I have put up the current first-draft version of my book here. You can read it, give me some feedback or just look at the pictures and layout concepts that I will gradually add more of over time. On The heART Project page you can see all updates about the project’s progress. After some thinking, I’ve also decided that I will create mini magazines that will feature the growth of the project, including things like concept sketches and journal notes. I am not sure if anyone would actually be interested in reading the magazine, but it will serve as an in-depth art journal for me and will be published digitally. (I might make physical copies one day)
I think it would be really valuable to see how the heART project progresses from the ground up! If you’d like to actually read these mini magazines, email me and I’ll let you know when a new magazine issue is out.

moniquealbarrett@gmail.com

There is so much to say about this project and how much it means to me. I want to make it as spectacular as possible, but I also have to be realistic. This is going to be a fuck load amount of work and an incredibly massive challenge, but I need to do it. I hope you want to join me in the making of The heART Project, because I truly believe that one day it will be something important.