81. Why Goal Setting Fails Therapists and How AI Helps

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Why Goal Setting Fails Therapists and How AI Helps

As therapists, we are often taught to set big resolutions without accounting for burnout, unpredictable schedules, or fluctuating energy. In this episode of Run Your Private Practice with AI, I explain why traditional resolutions tend to fail and how goal setting needs to be redesigned to support your nervous system, not fight against it. Instead of using AI as a productivity boss, you’ll learn how to use it as a thinking partner to create realistic, sustainable goals that fit your actual life and workload.

AI Tips You Don’t Want to Miss:

  • Why traditional goal setting does not work for therapists with fluctuating schedules and energy.
  • How to prompt AI to ask reflective, intake-style questions before creating any goals.
  • A simple framework for fewer goals with clear motivation and systems that do not rely on willpower.
  • How to choose weekly or monthly rhythms instead of daily tasks for sustainable goal setting.
  • How to create fallback plans for good days, hard days, and everything-is-on-fire days so goals do not collapse.

Prompts discussed in this episode:  

  • I am a therapist with a full clinical load and limited bandwidth. I want realistic goals that support my mental health, income stability, and long-term sustainability. Ask me thoughtful questions to help design resolutions that fit my actual life. No clinical advice.  
  • Based on my answers, propose three realistic resolutions that fit my actual life as a therapist. Each resolution should include a clear motivation and a simple system that does not rely on willpower.  
  • Break each resolution into daily, weekly, and monthly actions. Each action should take less than 15 minutes and feel realistic for a therapist’s schedule.  
  • For each resolution, give me a fallback version for a good day, a hard day, and an everything is on fire day. Make the lowest level so easy it still counts.  
  • Turn these resolutions into simple tools I will actually use, such as a checklist, weekly tracker, monthly overview, or calendar reminders. Keep it minimal and non-overwhelming.  
  • Act as my personal resolution coach. Check in weekly, help me recalibrate when life shifts, and remind me that sustainability matters more than perfection.

Connect with me:

Sponsored by Alma: www.helloalma.com/kym
Sponsored by Berries: www.heyberries.com/therapists

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Traditional resolutions are aspirational and not personalized. For a lot of people. We just say, yeah, this is what I wanna be and this is what I’m gonna do This year. It doesn’t work. We fail. Right?

[00:00:11] They’re just like assuming we have totally stable energy, we have predictable schedules and just unlimited capacity to see our clients and just live our lives and be happy and not affected by everything that’s going on in the world, and just all of that stuff. And we know that’s not how therapy actually works and actually functions.

[00:00:30] It’s a rollercoaster, right? One day you could see like 10 clients and the next day like one and be like totally on it ’cause you’re not stressed out or burned out and trying to fit everybody in.

[00:00:39] So the reframe here, and we’re gonna use AI to do this, is designing goals that support your actual nervous system instead of just like these like aspirational goals that we just throw out there on December 31st or whatever. So resolution should reduce friction, not add pressure to our lives.

[00:00:59] And this is really where AI can help us as a thinking partner, not a like productivity boss or anything like that, but just the thinking partner to help us, you know, get our mind going around. Like, how can I set these goals and really stick to them? And using ai, it can make our lives easier for this as well as everything else.

[00:01:17] If you guys don’t know, I love ai. I use it for everything. So anyway, chat, GPT really works best when it really. Understand you first, and I’ve talked about this before, like create a brand guide you know, have something you could upload, have a website that you can put in there and it directs to know everything about you, that sort of thing.

[00:01:36] So it, it’s gotta understand you first before it can really help you and personalize these resolutions or goals to you. And a lot of people make that mistake, right? They ask for goals before giving contact. To the ai and this goes for everything, not just like what I’m trying to talk about here today. We need to let AI understand our lifestyle, our workload, our limits, what we can handle, what we can’t handle.

[00:01:59] And we need to be a little bit insightful too. We can’t expect it to just know everything. So we need to give some feedback or insight into like. You know where we screwed up before, really? So here’s a prompt that you could start with. I’m a therapist with a full clinical load and limited bandwidth, right?

[00:02:15] We’re like burned out. I want realistic goals that support my mental health, my income stability, and long-term sustainability. Ask me thoughtful questions to help me design resolutions that fit my actual life, not just like, don’t just gimme clinical advice. So you can just put all that into a prompt. And ask the AI and see what it says.

[00:02:36] So then it’s probably gonna come back to you. And I’ve done this. That’s why I know it’s gonna come back and ask questions that kind of like, you know, we’re familiar with as therapist anyway, but it’s gonna ask questions like, what feels heavy to you right now? Right? It’s like, this is what we do in therapy with our own clients.

[00:02:51] But it gives you like good feedback, right? So, what feels heavy to you right now? It’s gonna ask something like that. What is working? What’s not working? What’s draining your energy versus restoring your energy? These are all things that’s gonna come up with, and this, when you give it that prompt that I talked about, what’s failed before and why did it fail before, right?

[00:03:12] It can really get in depth with that and that’s gonna cause us to have some introspection. Maybe something that we wouldn’t do if we’re just like setting a New Year’s resolution or a goal or something like that. And then I might ask you something like, what time, do you have, like how much time do you have to do this?

[00:03:25] What resources actually exist around this thing that you’re trying to do to help give a, give it like a better idea of like what it’s working with essentially. Right. It’s like doing an intake assessment. It should, if, if you gave it that prompt. And then after you answer all that, you’re gonna move into like the resolution creation, or the goal creation, whatever we wanna call it.

[00:03:44] Some people hate the word resolution, The goal is fewer goals, not more goals, right? So each resolution needs a motivation and a simple system behind it. Instead of making it super complicated. We just wanna have like little goals that are achievable, manageable, like smart goals, right? That we do with our treatment plans. But we could do this for ourselves and not just our clients with ai, right?

[00:04:06] So anyway, here’s a prompt for that, based on my answers, propose three realistic resolutions that fit my actual life as a therapist.

[00:04:15] Each resolution should include a clear motivation and a simple system that does not rely solely on willpower, right? So something like that. Okay. And then the next step is choosing like an operating rhythm, like, the pace that you wanna go about achieving this goal, right? We do this in our treatment plans all the times with our clients.

[00:04:34] So do we want it to be like daily goals or not? I mean, daily goals can really overwhelm anyone, including therapists, right? Because again, our schedules are not predictable. So sometimes we don’t know what’s gonna come up until like 10 minutes before the client’s supposed to be there.

[00:04:49] So maybe like weekly or monthly rhythms are much more sustainable, right? So everything should be doable in let’s say under 15 minutes. That would make it a lot easier to stick to, right? I do this for myself, like I set up some tasks and ChatGPT, like you can set up tasks. You could say, Hey, I want you to schedule this and remind me you can set up tasks.

[00:05:09] So I said, you know, once a week on, I think I said Sun, I think they send it, it sends it through on Sundays, but once a week, I want you to send me a reminder to go over all my wins for the week. Right. Because I do this thing where I get in my head and I’m like, oh, I haven’t accomplished anything. I suck.

[00:05:25] You know, all that stuff. So I was reading this book 10 Times Your Life or? yeah. 10 times Your Life. F it’s got a longer title, but something 10 times you’re like, I was reading that book and it was like, one thing that a lot of people do is they fall in the gap and they’re just like always like, disappointed in themselves or like reviewing, you know, that those cognitive distortions that we do, like, I suck or I’m not good enough, or that kind of thing.

[00:05:47] So I went to ChatGPT. I was like, I want you to send me this reminder every week. ’cause in the week it’s like, don’t fall in that gap. Like, remind yourself and be grateful and acknowledge the wins that you’ve had so you can actually see that you’re making progress. So anyway, that was a slide note, but I did that and I basically gave it to ChatGPT and told it to send me like a reminder every week for that.

[00:06:07] And I’ve got quite a few like that that have set up at random times and I’ll just kinda like get an email and I’m like, oh yeah, okay. I’m supposed to remember that. Or actually it notifies me on my phone too. I get like a notification from ChatGPT, I click it and I go over there and it opens up the chat thread and it says, what were your wins this week, Kim?

[00:06:24] Like that kind of thing. So anyway. Total side note, but here’s another prompt. Okay. Break each resolution into daily, weekly, and monthly actions. Each action should take less than 15 minutes and feel realistic for a therapist’s schedule. Okay. What do you think about that? So this is where most resolutions actually die, right?

[00:06:43] Like when life happens. So like we’re doing good on our diet, and then we go out with friends and we drink like three drinks and we eat nachos, and then it’s. Over. Right? So we don’t want that to happen. Other things, right? Our clients go into crisis, the kids get sick, our energy disappears, all that stuff.

[00:07:02] So what we can do with AI is build fallback plans so that the goal doesn’t collapse, or we just don’t like say, oh, nevermind. Screw it. Right? So here’s a prompt for that.

[00:07:11] For each resolution, give me a fallback version for a good day, a hard day. And then everything is on fire day. Make the lowest level easiest. So it still counts. Gimme a very easy way to do it if I’m having a terrible day.

[00:07:24] So this removes that all or nothing thinking that can come up. Right? Consistency becomes flexible instead of punishing us, right? When we’re not consistent, which we all love to do. And then AI can turn everything that you do with it into tools for you to be able to use, right?

[00:07:40] So. You guys have probably heard me talk about this on this podcast before. You can make an app for that now. So you can go in this same chat thread and you can say, okay, now how can I make an app for this to help me stay accountable and consistent? And it’s gonna say, Hey, here’s a way you can make an app for that.

[00:07:56] And then you take that and you say, turn it into a prompt, and you take it over to like Manus or one of those app tools that I’ve told you about in other episodes. Plug it in the prompt and it’s gonna make it app. For you. You can download the app, you can log into it, you can do all kinds of things with these apps that you make.

[00:08:11] They are called micro apps and I know I’ve talked about that on other episodes, but if you have questions, reach out. ’cause I’d love to tell you more about it. In November, in the AI club, we definitely had a module on how to build all of these mini apps. And even since then, it’s gotten a thousand times better.

[00:08:26] That was two months ago and it’s already A hundred percent better. Really. I mean, I, I, I’m creating apps that are just blowing my mind now that are just like full, like, programs at this point. Just like using Manus. You guys know I talk about Manus a lot, but anyway, say that into this thread about your resolutions or your goals and have it turn it into an app for you.

[00:08:45] Another thing you can do is you can make a custom GPT for it, right? We talk about that in the clinical AI club all the time. I have about 50 custom GPT that I’ve made for myself, and then the Thera AI hub is all like custom GPS and apps that I’ve built out for therapists. So that. So you don’t have to do it yourself.

[00:09:01] And just say something like, turn these resolutions into simple tools. I’ll actually use, such as checklists, weekly trackers, monthly overviews, calendar reminders, keep it minimal and non overwhelming. So that’s just a prompt you can plug in to help you do that. Or again, you can just make a custom GPT, you can even say, help me make a custom GPT for this, and then go and put it in and it’s gonna just be amazing.

[00:09:24] So here’s another prompt you can do for that. Act as my personal resolution coach. Check in weekly. Help me recalibrate when life shifts, and remind me that sustainability matters more than perfection. Right? We need to remember that ourselves, even though we’re therapists. So the big takeaway from this is resolutions of course fail.

[00:09:44] Everybody knows that when they ignore, like the context of what you’re trying to do. a AI can help you design goals that adapt instead of collapse these goals. So this is about nervous system support, not just like. You know, optimization. Like, okay, I’m gonna do, I’m going to make sure I accomplish this goal by next year.

[00:10:03] That sort of thing. It’s not gonna do that. It’s gonna support you and help you give or give you like realistic goals and strategies and tools like real built out tools that can help you accomplish this stuff if you want to.

[00:10:16] So here’s your takeaway. Stop copying other people’s like resolutions what you think you should do, and customize them to you. Give the AI your personality ways you’ve relapsed before, ways you haven’t been successful before. Tell it to ask you all the questions it needs to help you be successful.

[00:10:34] Tell it to make it small, manageable goals that you can actually accomplish. And. Feel proud of, and then have it turn it into tools that you’ll actually use. So if you’re a journal prompt kind of person, have it, turn it into a journal prompt that it can send you every single day that you can write in your journal. That kind of thing.

[00:10:51] I, okay, I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions and if you do it and turn it into something, let me know. I wanna hear about it.