When getting sober, it is important to map out your plans so you can see where you are in your journey and reward yourself for your progress. The GOST map is a simple but powerful for addiction recovery, making life plans, or just about anything. We’re going to make a map of what you want your life to be to help you plan for what you need to get clean. So take out a pencil and a blank piece of paper and we’re going to get started.
Goal
Goals are the general target of what you want to achieve. For example: I want to be physically and mentally healthy. The goal is the final state you want to achieve. If you have an idea for your goal, you might consider asking yourself “why is this important?” and if you might find that it is actually part of a bigger idea, so let’s run with the bigger idea as your goal instead.
Got a goal in mind? Good. Write it down in the middle of your page and draw a circle or a box around it.
Objectives
Once you have your goal, it’s time to break it down into component parts. What are several things that need accomplished to make it possible? Draw a short line like a spoke out from your goal and write your objectives down radially. (Sometimes it’s helpful to write each of these in different colored pencils, but this isn’t necessary.) For example, if we run with the goal of being physically and mentally healthy some objectives may be: live sober, eat healthy, find a supportive peer group, etc.
Strategies
Now, let’s look at your objectives one at a time, and write some strategies branching out from there. Strategies are the approaches you’ll use to get there. You will probably have multiple strategies for each one. For example: for the objective of eating healthy, one strategy might be cooking better meals, and another might be packing a lunch to work. You may find that some strategies in one objective are the same as others. This isn’t a problem, at all, it actually shows what you should be focusing on.
Tactics
Finally we’ll write in the tactics. They’re really the building blocks of a strategy. Small, manageable things that we can actually do to make them possible. (Although you can break these down even further into steps.) If we look at the strategy of cooking better meals, we may need to learn new and healthier recipes, not grocery shop when we’re hungry, etc. Again, you may find some tactics work for multiple strategies, and if so this might be a good first start.
The GOST map is a great way of getting started. If recovery is a part of your plan and you’re in Florida, call us today at (855) 425-4846 to talk about your map and how we can help get you to your goal.
