Goal check-up

We are two weeks into the year and by now most people have either given up on their resolutions, or never began them.  If you read my previous blog entry (Jan. 2), hopefully it spurred you on to forget resolutions, and instead write down some S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant & time-constrained) goals.

One of my goals for this year is to rewrite the book I wrote three summers ago, Clearing the Mommy Fog, and actually get it published.  Or self-publish it and hand it out to my coaching clients.  Clearing the Mommy Fog is a self-help guide for women, who have gotten married, popped out a baby or five, and suddenly realize that holy crap - is this really what life is all about?  Putting out domestic fires, having an identity based mostly if not wholly on being someone's mom, and resenting that NFL-obsessed farting lump on the couch who used to make you giggle like a school girl?

Two weeks into the year we are on school snow day four, which does not help one's goalkeeping efforts.  However, I have somehow managed to stare at the computer (without heeding Facebook or email's siren calls) for a few uninterrupted minutes here and there, and I have begun rewriting the book.  It is really amazing what three years' additional experience can do for one's perspective on matters such as happiness, fulfillment, spirituality, priorities.  I imagine that one of the most valuable aspects of having an editor, agent, publicist etc. is that at some point someone has to say, "Enough!  It's done!" - and this has got to be the second hardest thing about publishing a book (the first being the fear of rejection, since you are, after all, baring your soul to some extent, even with fiction).

In the three years since I initially wrote the book, I have become certified as a Life & Career Coach; completed two full Ironman, 2 half Ironman, and countless Olympic and sprint distance triathlons.  I helped to bring Achieve Kids Triathlon camps to the Northeast and am now preparing for our second season, again with me as Head Coach.  Our two kids have switched from private to public school and are thriving there (and our bank account is slowly recovering, without all those exorbitant tuition payments).  We decided one day to ditch our life in CT and one week later moved the family to a tiny island that didn't have as much as a library, for three months.  We started an ultimate frisbee club in our town, in an effort to get families playing together, and in so doing have made some great new friends and proved that everyone is athletic when given the chance.  And the reason to be so.  I have done something that for me is huge, which I always said I'd NEVER do - I agreed to a puppy.

Penny, the day we adopted her (she'd been abandoned) - April 2009

Penny, last week

I ran for office, something else I said "over my dead body."  (I lost, thankfully.)  I have started snowshoeing, learned how to change a bike flat, become addicted to Success Magazine, refused to give in to the Video Game herd mentality, started barefoot running.  I have made tons of mistakes, in fact not a single day goes by that I don't screw up with my kids, my husband, my dog, my businesses, my athletics, my nutrition.  Just right now, while I'm sitting here writing, my 7 year old son came over and asked me to draw with him and I said, "give me half an hour, I still have some work to do."  On Saturday, our dog had to have a painful procedure done because I had not taken her to get her nails clipped and one had split.  Countless occasions where I could have expressed my gratitude for my husband for working so hard so I can do what I feel is my purpose at least for now - care for the kids and build my coaching business, as well as train, teach yoga, write a book, and build Achieve- instead I turned to the dishes or the laundry, or worse yet, snapped at him for being impatient with the kids.  

All of this living and reflecting makes me come back to my book, and what I initially wrote about three years ago.  And I feel like I missed the point back then.  Instead of just a small section of the book, the overarching theme should be GOALS.  When you go through those days where you feel like for every three steps forward to take five back; or it seems you're doing one mundane task after the other; or you're making one mistake after the other, and the mommy guilt sets in - having goals is what keeps you from teetering off that ledge and into the abyss, which for some is a mediocre existence, for others is downright misery.  Either way is not the way that God intended us to live our lives.  By 2020, 1 in 3 adults will have diabetes; I can assure you that at least 9 in 10 of those diabetics will not have any written goals, certainly not in a balanced way: encompassing career, health, relationships.  

When we are doing what we are meant to be doing, thereby living purposefully and passionately, constantly being challenged yet achieving a steady degree of mastery - then we are truly living.  S.M.A.R.T. goals serve as the "destination postcard" to keep us on track, just like each triathlon, certification process, deadline, or picture of an ecstatic child crossing her first triathlon finish line, keeps me on track even when I'm stuck home with rambunctious children and a restless dog and husband for days on end.

Okay, off to do some art with my son :)

Become a goalkeeper!

This is my last posting for 2010.  It's been a great year, highlighted by our spontaneous decision to move to a small island for 3 months, Bill's finishing a huge 5-year hotel project, my finishing my 2nd Ironman triathlon, our kids finishing their first triathlons, our dog Penny finally outgrowing a horrendously naughty and hyper puppyhood.  But of course, those reached goals were only temporary goalposts as we now have to keep moving... more projects, more athletic quests, more dog training.

New Year's Eve is typically when we take stock of our year and what we've accomplished.  And what we didn't finish, or in many cases, never even started.  We had a holiday party at our house the other night, with our ultimate frisbee team, my triathlon-related friends, my fellow yogis.  On the evite I had asked everyone to come with 1-3 goals for the new year.  Part of me was doing it sort of jokingly, and I thought of having everyone write their goals on a board and then once everyone had had some holiday cheer, I would invite the guests to place bets on how long it would take each person to either give up on their goal or complete it.  Instead, what I had them to is before they left our home, they had to sign our guest book - and if they didn't mind sharing, list their goals in the book.

The next morning it was really great to not only read people's kind messages to us, but also to read their goals.  These were some of them:

• place top 5 in 25-29 Age Group National Championship
• Read more books
• Finish Ironman Lake Placid in 11:35 to 16:59
• run a 5k (with no walking)
• help secure funding for the Achieve Kids Tri program
• get a tattoo
• complete a Tough Mudder race
• run 3 times weekly from April through August
• take good pictures of everyone else doing triathlons
• complete my first triathlon
• run for office - again
• have a balanced life
• organize 12 rooms in my house in 12 months
• put myself first once in a while
• save $125/week for old age
• spend more time with the kids
• love each other more (married couple)
• be able to do a pull-up

And so on.  Some really great goals!  Obviously some may seem more difficult to others, depending on where we're starting from.  Some goals are for physical health, some for financial health, others for relationships and others for personal growth.  Some of these goals will be reached (actually, most of them, I believe, since this is a particularly motivated group of people compared to the average population) but some won't.  Not for lack of motivation (as I said, they're all motivated people) but rather, because whether your goal is to read more books or to improve your marriage or complete your first triathlon, all goals need to be designed in such a way or we are setting ourselves up for failure.  

The same thinking that has led you to where you are is not going to lead you to where you want to go.

- Albert Einstein

I am a HUGE believer in goals.  I think goals are so necessary that I am convinced that if we were all avid goalkeepers, far fewer people would be on anti-depressants (actually, any medication really), divorced, broke, unfit, unhappy.  

The person who has no goal, who doesn't know where he's going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety and worry - his life becomes one of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry.  And if he thinks about nothing... he becomes nothing.

- Earl Nightingale

When you have goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-driven (SMART), and you have them written down in a place that you refer to at least 2-3 times/day, you are very unlikely to allow your relationships, your career, your bank account and your body, mind and soul languish in mediocre status quo.  If we aren't busy growing, we're busy dying and the same applies to our marriages, passions, finances, muscles, spirituality - you name it.  

Having a SMART goal and referring to it often works for several reasons:  it guides us when making all those little decisions we make every day, that lead to new habits; it gives us a sense of purpose and a feeling of control.  Let's take one of the above goals from my friends' list:  spend more time with the kids.  I don't know anyone who thinks they spend enough quality time with their kids.  Even a stay-at-home parent, when s/he really thinks about it, will admit that s/he feels s/he doesn't spend enough uninterrupted, focused time with each child.  As it stands now, the goal isn't SMART, so I see it as a resolution (to be broken) rather than as a goal. A SMART goal would look more like this:

Spend 30 minutes a day with the children - no electronics or phones, etc - and the children take turns picking the activity.

Going further, the goalkeeper may decide that every evening, 8:00-8:30pm, when all dishes are done, homework put away, and the kids are in pj's, there will be some quality time with the kids.  Could be snuggling, reading together, praying, playing Scrabble, whatever.  Studies show that when a behavior is done for 3 weeks, it now becomes a habit.  So do this for 3 weeks and now you have a positive, powerful habit of communicating with and enjoying your children.  Every time you have an opportunity to add another activity to your busy week, your decision will be easier as you can decide whether it will impact your new habit, and if it fits into your core values (putting family first).  Too often we are wandering adrift, without a clear focus of where we're going or where we want to be, and we end up feeling frazzled, out of control, and back where we started.  Not having goals in the major areas of our life - relationships, career, finances, health, personal development, spirituality - is the same as sticking your third-grader in Tokyo without a map or a destination for a few days.  He will have some adventures, have some fun, make some good decisions and some poor ones, and probably end up lost.  Furthermore, having SMART goals in each of the above areas gives you a roadmap for achieving the elusive "balanced life."  If you know where you want to be in each of these areas, you'll make much better decisions that will lead to feeling more balanced.  If one of your goals is to finish your first 5k race, running the whole way, on April 30th, and another goal is to save $125 per week, when your college friends invite you to a very tempting weekend in Las Vegas on March 15th, you can objectively analyze how this fits into your goals - and make the decision relatively easily.

So, it's January 1st, 2011 - turn those resolutions into SMART goals and get to work (and play)!

(P.S. I began this posting on Dec. 30th but I finished it today, Jan. 1st, because sitting at the computer while the family was awake was not congruent with my goal to spend quality family time over the holidays :-) )