Over the years I have been somewhat obsessive with goals. After a couple years of trying to dial in a goal list, I believe I dialed in the right list. I have tied them to a focus on living a balanced life in the context of mind, body, soul, and social. When I started to make a goal list I became somewhat dogmatic. Anything on the list had to be met. But after a couple years of not completing each goal, but looking back with a sense of pride regarding what I accomplished, I became less focused on what had to be met and what had the potential to be pursued for a sense of accomplishment. Since I shed the need to hold myself accountable for every goal I set and was just going to look back and be proud of what I was accomplishing I just kept adding goals. One year I had grown my goal list to 20 various goals.
Having 7 goals seems like a better number. My job seemed to challenge me mentally, so I did not feel I needed much in this area, but to read a book a month sounded like a worthy goal. As my job was fairly sedentary, the body needed the most focus. No goal list should be without a weight goal, so I made a goal to be in the normal range for Body Mass Index. At my height this meant I needed to be 178 pounds or less to be in the range. I will likely never need to know what the lower end of the range is unless I get very sick. When I turned 48 I had heard about a goal of running a 10K in minutes equal to your age. I thought this sounded pretty bad-ass and felt it would be a good goal to keep my running pace in check as I aged.
The fourth goal was discussed in a previous post, which was initiated to push myself to workout 6 days a week and have some cross training designed into a point system.
With the mind and body being covered, there appeared to be a need to cover the social and spiritual aspect of my life. Though there did not seem to be a need for a social or spiritual goal, there did seem to be a need to check in on how I am doing socially and spiritually. Once a week, typically on a Sunday morning, which would be a good nod to the spiritual, I would make myself journal a page in a 5” x 7” journal. The journalling would need to have some reflection of how the week went and what could be an intention for the upcoming week. If I was not being a good person and felt my spirit was not where it should be I could reflect on why and what I could do better in the upcoming week. It also addressed the social, so if I felt I was not getting out in the world and connecting with others I could make it a priority which would bring the social pillar in balance.
Any coach on goal setting would have to agree these are well articulated, specific goals with good timeframes. With 5 goals being SMART, I felt there was room now for goals to be more open ended and provide space for more creativity, spontaneity and ability to take advantage of changes in life events. I still had a nagging notion I was not addressing the spiritual aspect of my life for attaining balance even though I did not have any reflections I was out of balance. The sixth goal became a general goal which stated daily I should do something good for the soul or makes me feel uncomfortable. This is broadly defined as meditating, relationship building, sauna / cold water therapy or something new which would take me out of my comfort zone and would lead to the final goal.
The last goal also was structured to allow unstructured activities in. Simply titled, “Discover” the intent was to try new things and bring some spice to life. If the journaling was on track there would be some level of monitoring if I was regularly bringing new and interesting activities into my life.
