A lot of people who happen to have a mental illness or psychiatric diagnosis consider the word “goal” a real four-letter word. There are a lot of things goals are, but a four-letter word shouldn't be one of them.

Before you get to your person-centered planning meeting, it can be important to figure out what is a goal to you. It can also be important to figure out what isn't a goal to you. What comes out of your person-centered planning meeting needs to be goals and outcomes that are important to you.

A goal is:

Something that helps you get the kind of life you want.

Something that helps you move on from where you are toward where you want to be.

Sometimes something that needs to be broken down into more manageable pieces (If you want to get a college degree, you not only need to already have a GED or high school diploma; you need to find a college, apply, figure out how to pay for college, decide on an area of study, maybe look at how you'll get there, will you room in a dorm, etc.)

When you focus on a goal that helps you get the kind of life that you want, that is focusing on a personal recovery goal. You may need to plan things to help you reach that goal. You may need skills, knowledge or support in order to reach your personal recovery goal.

Your person-centered plan is the time and the place to help plan out what you need to have or do to reach the goal.

It can be very important to make sure that goal is just what you want.

As an example:
In my own life, I would say, I want to be able to go home and visit my parents. For years treatment professionals wrote down that I wanted a better relationship with my parents by such and such a date. They would then put down as the outcomes things like:

She will call her parents 2X a month (I didn't.)
She will visit her parents 2X a year (I didn't.)

See, the reason I didn't go home and visit my parents was that I didn't want to see the sad look my parents used to have when they would look at me and realize how ill I was. It was hard for them to see me being so sad and so ill.

What I wanted was to be well enough that my parents didn't feel sad when they looked at me. What others heard was that I wanted a better relationship with my parents; that I wanted to be able to go home more often. And, yes, that was what I said, but I didn't know a better way to say what I meant. They didn't listen and understand that I wanted to be happy. We wasted a number of years because we were trying to make my person-centered planning goals things that I didn't really want.

Make sure that the goal or goals that you have will help you get what you want out of life. Be vocal. Have people come to your person-centered planning meeting who are interested in you, who listen to you, and can help you find a way to make goals and have outcomes that will help you get what you want.