
Strive to Thrive in 2025: Goal-Setting Strategies for Veterinary Professionals
Welcome Veterinary Heroes! It’s Melyssa from Veterinary Well-Being Buddy, here to help you jump-start 2025 with strategies to not only set but achieve your goals, whether they’re business-related, academic, or focused on your health and well-being.
Understanding Goal Types
Before diving into goal-setting tips, let’s understand the different types of goals: outcome, performance, and process goals.
- Outcome Goals: These focus on achieving a specific result, such as weight loss or increased revenue. While these are common, they often fall outside our direct control.
- Performance Goals: These are about improving aspects of our performance, like getting a higher score on an exam or enhancing our 5k running pace. We have more influence over these compared to outcome goals.
- Process Goals: These revolve around actions and behaviors—our area of maximum control. They are the stepping stones to reach performance and outcome goals. For instance, actions you take to lose weight or generate more revenue fall under this category.
Tips for Effective Goal-Setting
1. Align Goals with Your Values: Goals should reflect what truly matters to you. This connection ensures they are meaningful and motivating.
2. Positive Framing: Focus on adding positive elements to replace negatives. Instead of thinking about cutting out bad habits, think about what positive aspects you can introduce.
3. Focus on 1-3 Small Goals: With our profession’s tendency towards perfectionism and overachievement, tackling a few small goals at a time prevents overwhelm and sets you up for success.
4. Action-Oriented and Behavior-Driven: Rather than aiming to feel healthier or less stressed, focus on actionable behaviors that will lead to those feelings, as emotions themselves can be outside our control.
5. Flexibility is Key: Treat your goals like an experiment. Assess what works, make necessary adjustments, and remain adaptable.
6. Set Diverse Timeframes: Mix short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. This creates urgency and provides multiple checkpoints that help maintain focus across all goal types.
7. SMART Goals: Make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Example SMART Goal for a Veterinary Clinic
Specific: Incorporate gentle stretching exercises.
Measurable: Stretch for 30 seconds.
Achievable: Integrate with daily practices, such as morning huddles.
Realistic and Relevant: 30-second stretches are doable and a mini-moment of well-being like this can improve mood and performance for the veterinary team!
Time-bound: Start by implementing these stretches three times a week, aiming to make them a daily habit over time.
In summary, these goal-setting strategies are designed to support you in thriving throughout the year. I’d love to hear about your goal for 2025! Feel free to contact me via email, Instagram, or LinkedIn.
Thank you for your dedication as veterinary healthcare heroes! If you’re interested in taking your veterinary team’s well-being resources to the next level, make sure to check out our Well-Being Buddies membership for students, professionals, and clinics at https://veterinarywellbeingbuddy.com/membership – Digitail users save 25% off the first year of the clinic membership and 50% off the first three months of the individual memberships using code DIGITAIL!
Until next time, take care, stay healthy, and be well.
Melyssa Allen is a double board-certified lifestyle medicine professional and health and wellness coach and holds her Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Central Florida. She specializes in using therapeutic lifestyle interventions to coach veterinary professionals on adopting health-promoting habits that support physical, mental, and emotional well-being. With a diverse background as an animal trainer, mental health professional, and health & wellness coach, Melyssa has had the privilege of working with various populations, including first responders, combat veterans, cancer patients, survivors, and healthcare workers.
Melyssa contributed a chapter titled Prioritizing Well-Being for Healthcare Professionals in the textbook Mental Health and Wellness in Healthcare Workers: Identifying Risks, Prevention, and Treatment, showcasing her dedication to addressing unique challenges in the healthcare sector after working at local hospitals providing support to their healthcare workers throughout the pandemic. During the COVID pandemic, Melyssa recognized the need for more support resources in veterinary medicine, given the unique occupational challenges faced within the industry.
With her personal connection to the veterinary industry from her time as an animal trainer, Melyssa draws on her training in mental health, well-being coaching, and lifestyle medicine to provide comprehensive well-being solutions for veterinary professionals, teams, and organizations. Melyssa is the author of Healthy Living Doesn’t Have to SUCK and published a guided Well-Being Buddy Journal series available on Amazon.