Tag Archives: Goals

Goals

Home Is My Favourite Place To Be

I haven’t written a blog post since February 2022 and before that I had only posted sporadically during the pandemic. I had so much that I wanted to write about, but during that time the world was extra sensitive. I wasn’t interested in posting something that meant a lot to me, but might upset readers.

Where I live, the majority of pandemic restrictions and mandates were lifted on March 01, 2022. It was a long 2 years, but I can’t complain too much. I hadn’t gotten sick during that time and I didn’t experience the economic hardship that so many people had to live through.

Now that we are almost back to “normal”, I’ve had enough time to reflect on the things that I cherished the most during those two years. It wasn’t difficult to decide: I cherished my home the most.

Home is where I spent over a year working when the government prevented us from being in the office. Home is where I felt safe, it was virus free. Home is where I could get away from all the turmoil that was happening in the world. Home is where I slept for 12-16 hours a day when I was hit with COVID19 in April 2022.

Once the pandemic mandates were lifted and we were once again permitted to go where ever we wanted I still enjoyed coming home. I also realized there were many things I hoped wouldn’t return to “normal”, number one being potlucks. There is nothing I dislike more than potlucks. But sure enough, we weren’t even 2 weeks into enjoying the lifted restrictions and people were already sending invites for potlucks.

Source: Inspirivity, “Home Sweet Home”

I had hoped that we would carry on checking in on people to make sure they are doing alright and asking “do you need anything” and following through with their request. I hoped that virtual meetings and working from home would still remain options for workers.

Now that pandemic mandates and restrictions have been lifted in most places, don’t let the lessons you’ve learned, the self-discovery, and any revelations you had during those two years be forgotten.

What did you learn about yourself during that time?
How did you handle isolation?
What are the activities you missed the most?
Who were the people you missed the most and the least?
Were there social habits that you wished wouldn’t return?
Did you learn new skills or discover new interests?

The pandemic is over, but you’re certainly don’t view or experience the world the same way you did 2 years ago.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…” Ecclesiastes 3:1

One Word

Choosing One Word for 2022

I couldn’t decide if I should make a post in January about choosing One Word while people were still in the fantasy stage of listing all the grand things they intended to change about their life in 2022, or wait until February when reality and our usual habits would return.
Eventually I chose to wait until February. So, here I am posting encouragements about setting intentions a month into the new year.

I stopped making new year’s resolutions years ago when I read an article that stated it’s failure rate for many people. I was one of those persons who quickly failed at my resolutions or completely forgot what they were within a month or two of making them.
Choosing one word to focus on throughout the year to help with personal and spiritual growth turned out to be much more fruitful for myself and others.

Mike Ashcroft of MyOneWord describes choosing one word as such: “This process provides clarity by taking all your big plans for life change and narrowing them down into a single focus. Just one word that centers on your character and creates a vision for your future. ”

If you’d like to partake in choosing one word to help live an intentional and focused life, here is some guidance that has helped me over the years.

Start with self-inventory. Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself:

               -Is this something I truly care about?

               -Did I give this prayer and attention, or did I pick this word half hazardly.

               -Am I willing to go through this even if I don’t have support from others?

Do a word dump if you’d like. And create a list of words. Start with a few words, pray over them, reflect, and see if any of them resonate with you.

               -Feel free to break out the dictionary.

               -You can also choose non-English words. Sometimes what you desire can’t be described in English or maybe you speak more than only English, there’s no need to limit yourself linguistically.

It’s best to not make decisions when feeling stressed and overwhelmed. Give yourself time, you don’t have to decide on a word in one day.

Is there something that has been on your heart throughout the past year, events that had an impact on you, were there struggles, setbacks, or achievements that you want to carry into this new year? Are there somethings you wanted to embrace or let go of in your life? These can be used as influences in choosing your one word.


The one word that I have chosen for 2022 is courage. I knew that with this ongoing pandemic and its major disruptions in my life, I have to learn to be courageous and not give into fear and worry while I follow mandates, policies, and the increasing need to be flexible with how I live in this new reality. Courage, I realized, is what is going to help get through this.

What Does Courage Mean to You? - Create An Adaptable Life
My one word for 2022

Please know, there is no right or wrong word to choose. Whatever word you choose for 2022, I hope it blesses you, helps you to grow in character and in your relationship with God and others.

If you’d like to read more about choosing one word, feel free to visit the following websites:

One Word 365

My One Word

Goals

Shortcuts, and Getting Lost in Life

 

I think we can all admit that we’ve made some unwise decisions in our lives due to impatience. We want something and we want it sooner than later. We don’t want to take longer than we think it should take to get somewhere in life, be it a physical destination or a goal.

This weekend I learned about the story of the Donner Family, also known as the Donner Party. This was a group of approximately 90 American pioneers in 1846 who were to make their way from Illinois west to California. At one point during the journey brothers Jacob and George Donner decided to not follow the already established, tried and true path west, but instead decided to follow a supposedly new and shorter trail established by a man named Lansford Hastings. Let’s just say the shorter path ended up not being quicker, in fact, it didn’t even exist.

Image result for donner party

During the journey the emigrants discovered the path had not even been cleared; instead it was all dense bush and rocks. Travelling with a caravan of children, women, and men of different ages, along with animals, and personal belongings made the trek even more difficult. To say the journey was filled with failure is an understatement.

Due to heavy snowfall the travelling party eventually became trapped in the Sierra Nevada, unable to proceed further due to the weather. Unprepared for the harsh winter they experienced hypothermia and eventually ran out of food.

Members of the Donner Party eventually turned to survival cannibalism due to near starvation; some turned to murder; and others experienced trauma due to the death of their spouses and children. Eventually some members of the party were rescued when the weather allowed a group of men to form a search party. Apparently roughly half of the party survived long enough to be rescued, the majority of them being children.

I share this extreme story of what can happen when we make decisions to take unnecessary short cuts to show the lengths some of us could be willing to go even if it meant risking our safety and well-being. It’s easy to look at the Donner Party and question how they could be so foolish and careless, but I’m confident we can all search through our past and find our own versions of impatient decisions which lead from one thing to another until regret, embarrassment, anger, and shame took over.

Image result for going in circles

Major areas in life where we are heavily tempted to take shortcuts:

Money. Be ware of risky habits such as gambling, buying lottery tickets if you can’t afford them, signing up to be an multi-level-marketing (MLM) rep if you can’t afford the start up costs and don’t have a large network to sell to, borrowing money from friends for things you don’t need, and using credit cards for unnecessary big ticket items instead of saving money.

Friendships. Making friends as an adult takes a lot longer than it does when you are in high school or college. Solid adult friendships take time. Avoid the mistake of thinking that frequently hanging out with people leads to meaningful friendships, it doesn’t most of the time. It might take years to build long lasting friendships with people you can trust, depend on, and genuinely care about, but it’s worth it.

Goals. Whatever your goal is, the way to achieve them is to commit to the work of daily discipline, learning, failing forward, sacrifice, and prioritizing. We look around and see successful people in person and on social media. What can easily be forgotten is how long it can take to become knowledgeable in your field and develop the skills that will keep you successful for the long run. People who take shortcuts to success are often people who have cheated others, stepped on people, fought a nasty fight to the top, and deceived someone somewhere. You want your goals to be achieved with integrity, honesty, hard work, and ethics.

Whenever you are tempted to take shortcuts in life remember this verse from Proverbs 21:5:

“Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.”

 

Goals, One Word: Quiet

Judging without Judging

Life live to the fullest!

The title, it doesn’t sound quite right. Judging without judging others, how is that possible, is that even possible? Sounds almost like an oxymoron.

Over the past few weeks I had been trying to figure out how to deal with a very powerful peer who happens to be a highly judgmental, self-serving, vindictive, and bitter person (this description sounds judgmental, doesn’t it?). It has gotten to the point where a conversation couldn’t be had without her tearing down other women who work in our industry. It was an earful of listening to nasty comments about how these other women dress, what their husbands look like, silly gossip, and fantasies of taking her opponents down in the cruelest manner.

If this was a friend rather than an industry peer, keeping my distance would be easy. Speaking to her about the behaviour described earlier is out of the question. I have seen firsthand what has happened to those who have dared to do so; it wasn’t pretty. Unfortunately, I live in a mid-sized city and it is difficult to entirely avoid people who are in the same career field as you. Everyone knows somebody who knows someone. In the end I decided to forfeit having her as part of my career sphere of influence.

The Lessons

What I have been learning is that when you are close to a peer(s) and you distance yourself from these people who are emotionally toxic yet powerful and well connected, it makes more labour for you in terms of networking, getting connected with just the right people, learning the ropes, and having your work known by others; but in the end it is worth it.

Not having that powerful and seasoned professional by your side to give you the ins and outs of a cutthroat industry makes the struggle even harder, but I was alright with this, my personal values were more important.

If your career-based circle of associates requires that you cut others down, eliminate your competition with dishonest words or actions; and your emerging business plan includes a social media smear campaign against people you (or they) don’t like; take a pass, this is necessary. Your mentors and those who are part of your career circle heavily influence your behaviour, values, and personal work ethic.

Ask yourself, “what part of who I am as a person is being sacrificed in order to stay within this career based inner circle”?

Is the sacrifice and trade-off your…?

  • personal values
  • unnecessary time away from your family
  • money that you don’t have to spare
  • integrity and honesty
  • healthy character traits
  • long-time friendships (healthy ones)
  • your faith/religion
  • keeping up shallow and superficial appearances
  • constant emotional and mental fatigue that isn’t directly related to the production of your work
  • abandoning your own dreams or personal goals in order to people-please
  • decrease in quality of your own work

Count the costs, not just short-term, but long term as well. It can be difficult to set boundaries with people who have direct influence on your work, reputation, and income, but I encourage you to find a way to create a healthy distance between yourself and industry peers who have a spirit of spitefulness, revenge, pettiness, and exclusion. The slower path to career fulfillment will leave you with a clearer conscience knowing your achievements were obtained without having to sabotage peers, belittle the work of others, or step all over people.

When you take the more laborious and often longer path, do so because the other option was not a part of who you are as a person, nor who you aspire to become. Recognize that people who thrive from their toxic behviour are often personally scared and insecure, and might even have developed such ways of living due to past trauma. But remember, it is not your problem to deal with. Be willing to operate in a different way without seeing yourself as better than anyone else or allowing bitterness and self-doubt to permeate your mind and your work. This is how you “judge without judging”.