Setting Goals

So, since it’s been a LONG time since my last post, this one might get a bit wordy. ;o)  I’d like to talk about goals today.  We all have them to some extent, and we all would like to achieve these goals we set for ourselves.  My goal at the beginning of this year was to improve my health so I could enjoy our two week vacation this year.  The trouble with goals is that often times, life kinda gets in the way.  There are always things that happen that are beyond our control, and our challenge is how we deal with these things.  My example for this year is from my work. I have been with the same company for 25 years. ( Yeah, I know, I’m sooooo OLD). But there have been an awful lot of B I G changes in my workplace, and all that has served to ramp up my stress levels to probably the highest levels I can remember.  I am incredibly close to burning out, and that two weeks of vacation was incredibly hard to return from.  Since we’ve still got plenty of bills to pay, I have to suck it up for now.  In spite of all this extra drama, I can say that I did enough through the year to be able to honestly enjoy our vacation.

Goal Setting 101

I’m going to be practicing setting and achieving goals for the next three months, so when the new year comes around, I will be even more motivated to make positive life changes. Everyone should have goals. We all need something to look forward to, something  positive to work toward. But a lot of people, including myself, really don’t do it right.  When I want to set a goal, I tend to think big grand ideas that I can’t possibly achieve in the time I set for myself.  The trick to setting goals and achieving them lies in specifics. For example, I wanted to get healthy in order to enjoy my hard earned vacation. It sounded like a great idea, and in theory, it was. But it was not specific enough.  What steps was I going to take in order the ‘get healthy’? Therein lies the problem.  I had some more specific ideas, like ‘I will not eat any fast food’. But even that was not specific enough.  I needed something more to the point and practical,  ‘I will prep and pack all my lunches in order to avoid eating fast food for lunch’. That is a specific and achievable goal. If we are going to achieve a great big goal, it makes sense to break it down into small, specific goals that can be achieved and added together to create the bigger goal.  Honestly, I have trouble with that one every single day. But the thing that keeps me going back and trying is the fact that I actually do feel better when I feed my body the good healthy foods it needs to function well.

There is a really big world out there. I want to see more of it. In order to do that, I need to make some changes in my every day life.  To quote Jimmy Buffet,

“Oh, yesterday’s over my shoulder,

So I can’t look back for too long,

There’s just too much to see waiting in front of me

And I know that I just can’t go wrong”.

Feel free to join me in stretching out of our comfort zone and dividing our goals into tiny bite sized pieces to help us get where we want to be. Please share any tips and tricks you may have picked up that help with setting and achieving goals.

Now, I’m off to plan next year’s vacation!

KC