Making Goals & Kicking Negative Feelings

I do not quite know how, but Ms. Melanie Bowen came across my blog and contacted me about writing a guest post. I am glad to be able to offer this space and her thoughts for your consideration.

Making Goals and Kicking Negative Feelings
by Melanie Bowen

There is no better motivation in life, for anything, than a tangible reminder of all that needs to be done. This is what makes people so inclined to make a list of their goals, hopes and dreams during the course of their life. This tangible reminder that their world is full and happy and they can achieve anything they set their minds to is a way for people to motivate themselves to be their absolute best. This is one of the reasons so many doctors encourage their patients that are suffering from rare forms of cancer, such as mesothelioma to keep a journal or write a blog while they are undergoing treatments and after they have completed their treatments.

Quality of Life

Quality of life is important when it comes to a person’s prognosis with cancer. It is not uncommon for a cancer diagnosis to make a person feel down, even depressed. However, it is important that those with negative feelings find a way to diminish them and move forward. This is not to say that feeling negative emotions is a bad thing; emotions are natural and serve a purpose in every person. This is merely to say that there is a way to deal with those negative emotions so that they do not remain a person’s focus, taking away from the good things that person has to focus on. The reason doctors encourage journaling is because it is a way for people to deal naturally, and quickly with their emotions. Putting their feelings on paper is a way to deal with them so that they are no longer plaguing people. Purging their happy and negative feelings onto paper helps people deal with their emotions and improve their quality of life by not ignoring how they feel.

Making Goals

Another great aspect of journaling is a person’s ability to create goals. Goals are a great way for people to remind themselves they need to get some motivation going. A person that has goals is more likely to fight harder and to improve their quality of life because they have something to look forward to. These goals needn’t be anything huge; not everyone wants to accomplish something like sky diving or winning a Nobel Prize. Some people want simply to learn to drive a car with a manual transmission or to knit so they can make a blanket for their grandchild’s crib. The goals that are most important to people are the ones that should be written down for motivation.

Journaling is a great way for people to express themselves and make them heard, even if they are the only people that will ever see their words. A tangible reminder that life is good is always a beneficial feeling for cancer patients to have.