Tag: goals

Thoughts for Thursday

+ Yesterday, in our bitter cold weather (for Florida), I saw one of my arbiters of “all is okay in the world”, walking at a clip, in short shorts. I have written about Dave W. on the blog before. He is an elderly neighbor (currently he is at least 85). Dave W. is tall, friendly, smart, athletic, always smiling and still sharp in his mind. When I stopped to say hi (me, in my heavy sweater, staying firmly put, inside my warm, cozy car), Dave W. told me that he probably should have not worn short shorts. “This is the first time in a long time, I can say that my legs are actually cold,” he said to me with a good-natured laugh. I always feel reassured when I see Dave W. out walking. Truthfully, I looked for him out on our sidewalks, all throughout the pandemic. I get a little nervous when I don’t see him out walking for a while, and so when I saw Dave W. walking yesterday, it was like a little ray of sunshine in my heart. A Dave W. sighting is one of my “touch grass” reassurances that life can be simple, kind, steady and good, no matter what is going on for me personally, or out in the world.

Do you have anything or anybody in your own life that is a touchpoint reminder of the solid good that is all around us if we allow ourselves to stop being distracted by all of the noise? I watched Lady Gaga singing a rendition of Mister Rogers’ “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” this morning. (Tell the truth, you are now currently humming that song to yourself.) Lady Gaga said that it was important for her to keep the purity and the beauty of the song, in her rendition that she created for the Super Bowl. Purity. Beauty. These things are still all around us. Look for the signs. They can be surprising and in disguise. In fact, purity and beauty may just be reliably walking down the sidewalk, in old, but sturdy, steady legs, in short shorts.

+ “Discipline is just remembering what you want.” – Kate O’Donnell I would add “the most” to the end of this quote. “Discipline is just remembering what you want . . . the most.” Do I want to be able to zip up the zippers of my mother-of-the-groom dresses? Then, despite currently wanting to eat that Oreo, I actually want to fit into the dresses, the most. Discipline. Sigh. (putting the Oreo in the garbage)

+ “Intention” seems to be the buzzword these days. Over the past weekend, we were discussing with our long time friends, each of our plans to be intentional with our relationships with our adult children going forward. We want to have happy, healthy, authentic relationships with our kids and their significant others and we talked about how we were all going about that intention which we share. The dictionary says that being intentional means being deliberate and having a plan. It says that an “intention” is an aim or a goal. Interestingly, the dictionary also says that from a medical standpoint, an intention is the “healing process of a wound.” I don’t believe that you can heal anything, without the intention to do so. Being intentional in life, seems to take “being present” to the next step of action. You become present with “what is”. You face any wounds and you acknowledge them, and then you make intentions for what to do to heal and to thrive.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Plus One

I have a day full of appointments but I had to add one more exhibit to our thought museum, here at Adulting – Second Half. This is another one that arrived yesterday, just in time to get me back on track to focus on my “cleaning out my house” project this summer (I am admittedly, a highly distractible person):

“Does your weekly planner reflect your yearly goals?” – Chani Nicholas

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

This is the Beginning

“– what would you be doing differently in your life if we were approaching the end of the year, rather than the middle of it? Well for one, you’d probably be celebrating! Two, you’d also be doing all those things making sure all the loose ends of the year are tied up and setting intentions for the next year.” – Cassandra Tyndall

Happy Summer Solstice! It’s that halfway point in the year. It’s a great time to hit pause and use the light from the longest day of sunlight, to shine the light on where you’ve “been” in 2023 already, and to reflect on how you would like to close 2023 out. My husband loves to listen to the Gerry Cinnamon song below, when we are relaxing by our pool during warm summer evenings. Sometimes I think that he overplays it, but I will say these last few days I have woken up to the start of the song, playing on repeat in my mind. And it stirs me. Deeply. I hope that it stirs you, too. “This is the beginning of the rest of your life.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Pivot

I saw or read something recently that has stuck with me. I have been using this “question/tool” a lot to motivate myself and my family. This morning, I tried to see who to credit this idea to (I couldn’t remember where I had seen it/read it), and it turns out that this concept is all over the internet, from many different sources. I’m not sure why it took me so long to find it, and to utilize it, but better late than never. (especially as I embark on my new, freer empty nest) Here’s the question:

“Are you running away from something, or are you running towards something?”

Or sometimes I turn it into more of a statement/mantra:

“Run towards something, not away from things.”

The best way to use this tool, is to use it as a way to pivot from the negativity of what you don’t like in any situation/relationship/state of being, into figuring out what you do want instead. You go from a negative state of mind of hating your job/your house/your major/your health/your relationships, etc. into a positive state of mind of moving towards what you do want instead, in the way of a job/living situation/degrees and awards/health habits/fulfilling relationships, etc. So instead of defensively and impulsively running away from situations (or using avoidance and distraction), you instead aim your sights towards what you do want in your life. You steer your car confidently and purposefully down the road, in the direction of your goals and your dreams, instead of driving furiously and aimlessly and spastically away from whatever is in your rearview mirror, with no idea where else to go.

If you find yourself running away from something, ask yourself what you should be running towards, instead. In the words of Ross from “Friends”, “Pivot!”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

1010!

I’ve mentioned before that I love playing the game 1010! on my phone. It is a grid game, sort of like Tetris, where you are trying to fit the pieces all together, so that when a solid line of ten blocks is formed, it disappears, making more room, for more pieces to be added. The game ends when you cannot fit the various shaped pieces to be played, on to the grid anywhere.

I have come to learn that I am most successful in the game and I tend to get my highest scores, when my focus is on just getting a line to disappear. On the other hand, when I try to make the grid look perfect and set up patterns and I try to make a whole lot of lines disappear at once, is usually, when I set myself up for failure. Invariably, an odd figured shape comes out of nowhere and because I have so many pieces neatly placed on the grid, there is nowhere to put the unexpected shape.

I was a marketing major in college and I have held various sales positions, over the years. “Always be closing!” is something that they preach to you in sales. I repeat that mantra to myself when I am playing 1010!. It reminds me to keep my eye on the goal, racking up points and keeping the grid relatively empty, by making lines disappear, no matter how messily that happens.

It struck me the other day, that life is a lot like this. We get goals in mind, but we get tripped up, thinking exactly how those goals should come about. We want things to be neat, easy and orderly, but that’s not really how a lot of life goes. When we keep our eye on the prize – our goal, we are more open to the different avenues and approaches of how that goal may be attained. We aren’t as easily thrown for a loop, when something unexpected (that dang, hard to place shape) comes our way. When we believe in the goal, we know that there are many possible ways to get to the goal and that forces bigger than us, are helping us along the way. When we keep focused on the desired end result, and we aren’t as worried about how we get to that end, but just hold on to our faith that we will get there, however messy and hard and full of surprises the journey to the goal may end up being, we have a much better likelihood of success. When we hold fast to how we think an objective should be attained, we more easily get stuck and mired in disappointment. We have lost our vision of the goal, because we keep eyeing “the pretty picture” of how we think the goal should come about. When we do that, we have lost our way.

“Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.”

John C. Maxwell

Where’s Your Dedication?

A while back, I read an article about a school principal who was being honored for the many valuable changes he had made to make his school from one of the worst schools in the area, to one of the best.  He said that the mantra he had grown to live by was, “If you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way.  If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”

Reflecting back on your life, you can see the things that you wanted badly.  You would stop at nothing to get it.  The burning drive to achieve whatever was most desired couldn’t be stopped by any obstacle. No negativity was allowed to seep in to stop the momentum.  Smart Thinking, my favorite Twitter feed recently posted, “Be stronger than your strongest excuse.”  When we really want something, that strength isn’t hard to find.  When we feel uninspired about something that we are doing, the excuses wheedle their way in easily.

I find that I use these reflections to really look at what I’m doing on a daily basis.  There are things that I am doing that I’m obviously just going through the motions, in a lackluster way.  Could that be showing me that there are certain areas in my life that I am just wasting my time?  Are there things that could be cut out of the schedule or modified or changed because I am not doing them with gusto and often I am looking for excuses not to do them at all?  Of course, there are certain daily things that we just have to do like wash the dishes, do the laundry, pay the bills, etc. These things are hard to do with any kind of enthusiasm at all, but they still need to be done.  Even so, there are also a lot of filler items that we all have in our lives that become habits, “have-tos”, “just what we do”s, that maybe aren’t necessary and are blocking us from really trailblazing towards our biggest passions and possible achievements.

Actions speak louder than words.  We can say that we really want something, but the actions we are taking show us really how badly we want it.  Anne Wilson Schaef said, “When we underestimate ourselves, we are insulting God.”  We can really want something, but we then let fear and insecurity stop us from achieving it.  But if God put that desire in our heart, doesn’t it follow that He will use the forces of the Universe to help us attain our yearnings, if we put the action in and passion towards our goals in equal measure?

To really be clear about what we are wanting to accomplish in life, we have to become observers of our own actions.  We have to observe the feelings that either propel us towards our goals or hold us back from carrying out what we say we want to achieve.  When we get clear on our objectives and understand our true motivations, there can be no stopping us, on what is truly ours to realize.

I saw this posted on a wall the other day, “Do more of what makes you forget to look at your phone.”  The actions that we get lost in, the things that make time stop for us, are where our hearts lie.  When we follow the path of our heart with honest recognition, passion, desire, confidence and faith that Higher forces are helping us along the way, there is no stopping us!