Goals

I never thought very highly of goal-setting. Yes, I know, they are supposed to be a way of focusing your life and staying motivated and there are these bogus "statistics" that say people who set goals are more likely to achieve them...or something. But I'm one of those people who re-evaluates my life constantly, so setting S.M.A.R.T goals was really just a lot of extra work that I didn't (don't) have time for.

However, I took a class this semester where we did goal setting at the beginning and end of the semester and then compared them. We had to write 1-year and 5-year personal goals and professional goals. At the end of the semester, I felt rather justified in my lack of goal-setting practice, because my goals 1) hadn't changed drastically from beginning to end of the semester and 2) the only one that had, I could have totally told you that my thoughts had changed, without comparing the written down goals - I know myself pretty well, thank you very much!

During this process, though, I realized that the professional goals were easy - those are the things that I have been generally working towards my whole life, if not at least the past 8 years. The personal ones though, now those were hard. (Partly because I didn't feel like "get married" was an appropriate long-term personal goal to write down for a leadership class. Not to mention, it's nearly impossible to predict and plan for something like that.) But I was driving home from yoga tonight (yes, yoga, I had to swallow whatever pride I carry around and tell my mom that she "won" and yoga actually made my back feel better - I've been fighting her on this for...'round about 13 years) but I was driving home from yoga and realized that I do have a goal - to feel better about my life. This has been my goal for the last 2 years - as I'm sure if you've read much of this blog, you probably could have guessed. But to get a grip, grow up, and be content and happy.

Now, I am naturally an extremely patient person, but when it comes to myself, I think I can get things done quickly and get very frustrated when I can't. That is also part of this goal. My goal is:

Be completely healthy in mind, body, and spirit, in one year.

That is my true "1-year personal goal" Dr. Robinson, I hope you are happy. So here is my explanation:

- One year because, as much as I hate to admit it, these things take time and I have to accept that. My previous attempts that amounted to "next month," "when school starts," and various versions of "tomorrow" have not worked and were a result of me wanting to force my emotions into submission which is not really very healthy overall. One year will make it so I do not try to rush this process because, after all, you can't rush perfection. :)

- Mind, body, and spirit - because all good things come in threes, and "three is a magic number," but also because these three aspects of a person are so intertwined that they really can't be distinguished, and because if I want to be the best Me that I can be, all three of these need to be in one-piece.

So here is to a journey, and may the journey be as valuable as the destination. 

What I Want

At some point, we re-evaluate our lives - if you are me, this happens on nearly a daily basis. Recently, I've been finding a lot of things that I want that I don't currently have, and I think I've always wanted them. So here is the beginning of the list of things that, at 25, I want:

1. I want to read a book more than just on school breaks.

2. I want to cook.

3. I want to have the time to go to the gym 3 - 5 nights a week - and actually go.

4. I want to go grocery shopping with my roommates.

5. I want to spend Friday afternoons with my mom.

6. I want someone to love me, but I also want them to be willing to work and grow with me. Like an old school pop song, "I want [them] to want me."

7. I want to get a full night's sleep every night.

8. I want to watch TV.

9. I want to go to Happy Hour with my girl friends.

10. I want to clean my apartment. (Well, I want a clean apartment, which means that I want time to clean it...not really that I want to do the cleaning.)

11. I want time to talk to my best friends and keep in touch.

12. I want to hang out with my sister.

13. I want to be able to work and come home, and have work stay at work.

14. I want to make another quilt.

15. I want to work on my scrapbooks.

16. I want to be able to disconnect from the world for an entire week and not have some disaster to fix.

17. I want to walk my [parent's] dogs.

18. I want to go for a run.

19. I want to break in my climbing shoes.

20. I want to be able to sit for 5 minutes, and truly feel like I can and not have to worry about everything else I have to do.

What do you want?

Trust

My tea told me this today. I seem to have a habit of finding tea with words of wisdom on them. Some extra wisdom never hurt anybody.

This struck me because I have this issue. The first being that I have to work with someone that I don't really trust. (Disclaimer, this has nothing to do with their ability to do their job or with their personality and I know they care deeply.) But I still don't trust them. I don't trust them to deal with any situation like an adult should - and it makes my life a lot harder. 

No one needs people around who make your life harder - but when your soul is already not at peace because of everything else in your life, this issue is the one that can surface as the most important - even when in the long run, it's probably the least important.

Trust that people will act like adults, do their job, not hurt you, be there when you need them....those are all things that we need to be confident in in order to live a peaceful life. When one of those is out of alignment, your whole person is off-kilter. The challenge then is to be the adult - to deal with each situation head-on and in the most graceful way possible. Things get better always, but sometimes it just takes awhile, a lot of hard work, and a lot of re-centering, to get yourself there.

Peace Be With You.