Staying Positive with Goals in Challenging Times

A Little Housekeeping Before We Get Started: This is a Mother/Daughter dialogue. Robin(Mom) will be writing in blue and Emma(Daughter) will be writing in orange.

Keeping Your Goals in Mind can Help in Navigating Through Fear

I, like probably many of you, have struggled with motivation over the last few weeks. In this time when globally humans are experiencing something that at least in my lifetime we have never before; it is difficult to not get trapped in a cycle of fear and lose track of your goals. After spinning my wheels for a few weeks and adjusting to these new challenges I made the decision to get myself back on track and prioritize my goals once again.

I had a birthday recently and had in my mind a whole list of goals that I wanted to list out and set out to complete by the time I hit 45. However, the recent environment has me looking at goal planning a little differently.

The thing that I love so much about the Internet is that for this self-help junky “bleh” there are so many amazing mentors just a few keystrokes away at all times. For me one of those mentors has been Ruth Soukup, for several years now. Oh, okay I like her. Ruth I feel is such a motivator to women who are looking to push themselves and grow. This is something that I think should be a priority for all of us. She has written several wonderful books over the last few years but her most recent “Do It Scared” has been such a game changer for me.

In the book “Do It Scared” and also in her recent TedX Talk on the subject, Ruth shares the details and strategies for overcoming the seven fear archetypes that she and her team identified in their research. Ruth has shared with the public a fear assessment to determine your fear archetypes at her site http://www.doitscared.com, this was very eye opening for me.

I’ve always been a procrastinator. With guidance from Ruth’s book it has become very clear that one of my strengths as an accountant, which has been my meticulous attention to detail, is also one of the things that has held me back in many of my other goals. I am, now it seems so obvious, a perfectionist. Emma and I have been dreaming about getting this blog started for a very long time, I have held us back waiting to get it just right.

After a lot of self reflection, help from mentors like Ruth, and motivation from watching my daughter push through so many things to keep putting her creativity out there, I am finally determined to start overcoming my fears. Staying trapped in fear is not helping the world. I am a strong believer that the more positive energy we put out the more we are doing for our world. So let’s not get trapped in that cycle of fear and instead start accomplishing our goals.

My Goals:

I am going to focus on accomplishing tasks that will help me work to accomplish three goals by the time I am 45. Those goals are, to push through my perfectionism, to develop healthy routines, and to ingrain stick-to-itiveness into my life.

Conquering Perfectionism

This Blog will be a big step in helping me to overcome my perfectionism. Publicly committing to make progress weekly on this blog; I am constantly having to push through my fear to take steps here. My natural inclination is that I don’t have everything figured out yet, that if I research more I can make it better, and that it isn’t as good as some of the other blogs I follow. But Emma is a great partner in helping me push through that, she is so driven and she is open to trying so that she is always creating.

I have to accept that as we make progress we will learn more and improve. I have to be willing to make mistakes because that is often the best way to learn. The truth is that even though I have always tried to do everything right I have made many, many mistakes just like we all do. We are human and we all make mistakes. I have a lot of grace for others, I need to have grace for myself and this will help me to not allow my perfectionism to hold me back from accomplishing my biggest dreams.

Developing Healthy Routines

So often it is my inclination to say I will lose X number of pounds by such and such date, or I won’t drink soda anymore, and eat junk-food. But the truth is that I have realized when I am to stringent with my goals I end up setting myself up for failure. By watching my patterns I have found that I am more successful when I setup reasonable routines. Not beating myself up if I am not totally perfect with those routines all the time, and not say I will not ever do things that I enjoy but instead that I will add healthy things balancing between the two.

For example with my health I have been most successful when I track my food, try to drink 8 cups of water a day, and do some sort of exercise between 4-5 days a week. I have used an app from http://www.sparkpeople.com on and off for several years. I know that if I am on track with that most days I feel much better and if I can develop consistency with that I will be on track with my health goals.

For my finances I have also found an app that allows me to quickly keep a budget and keep track of my monthly expenses. The more simple I make this process the better I do with staying on top of things.

I believe that by making these items a regular part of my day and not being overly critical of myself when am not always on track they will become routines that enable me to accomplish my goals.

Ingrain Stick-to-itiveness

I have always loved this phrase because without persistence I don’t believe we would ever accomplish any of our goals. If we set goals that do not require us to fall at times and have to dust ourselves off and get back up to push forward then how would we grow. We have to stick to it, but by having an inner dialogue that is encouraging instead of degrading when we face these challenges allows your failures or challenges to become just another step in learning.

One of my favorite quotes has always been, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” from the Thomas Edison. If I just don’t quit I will make strides, I will come closer every day to obtaining my goals and I will develop this tenacity by giving myself grace and celebrating my successes.

5 Goals to accomplish before I am 17: 

1. Figuring out and mastering this whole driving thing. 
2. Write each day. 
3. Get better grades in math and learn how to ask for help. 
4. Write an outline for a novel and stick with it, even if it is not perfect. 
5. Educate myself in Photography.   

I formatted this post differently than Mom to show my love for list making. (I make a mean pros and cons list.) Mom thinks my impromptu list making for anything and everything is hilarious. I just think it is an effective way of deciding things and/or organizing your ideas. Hence I have listed out some of my goals for this year here for you to see today. 

To explain some of them I will start by saying, this whole teenager thing is not easy. Especially if you are like me; a 25 year old in a 16 year olds body. I have been in a car my whole life, always going on long cross country road trips leave an impression on a girl. I desperately want to master driving even though it scares the living poop out of me.

Another thing is, I really struggle with math. Ironically both of my parents are accountants. You would think I would be an A+ student, but far from it actually! You get B’s, your doing just fine. To me B’s stand for “Bad student who will never amount to anything other than a Bad life.” Or at least that is what they whisper to me when I see them on my transcript. Anyway, I would really like to improve because I really think my low B’s are due to my stubbornness. I have always refused to ask questions and it really is one of my downfalls. While this goal is based on math it is really about accepting that unfortunately I am human and not Data from Star Trek and that I need help sometimes.  

So some of my other goals include writing everyday and learning more about photography. Both of these skills will not only help me with this blog, but also greatly benefit me in my school life presently and in the future.  I am in over 10 clubs and organizations at my school, and some of which require me to know how to take pictures, edit them, and then write about them. (You might have guessed it. Yes, I am on my school’s yearbook staff.) I also want to study journalism in college, so these are skills I definitely need to have up my sleeve.  

Lastly, I desperately want to write a novel before I am 20. I have made attempts with about 5 outlines, but I have always failed to go through with it. I will constantly find what is wrong with this idea and how it could never work or lose my motivation and passion for the book all together. Most of the time it is a mixture of both of those things. But this year I feel like it is finally time and I just need to pull the trigger.       

In Conclusion

I know getting real about our goals helps to keep me focused and to stay hopeful and positive in these challenging times.

I hope that you have taken inspiration from this post and will apply some of our thoughts and goal setting tactics to your own life.

This time in the worlds history is clearly challenging and stress inducing, but with the right state of mind, with respective calmness, and with unity I do believe we will get through this pandemic and strive to thrive after it.