I have been caught up in the day to day again; not really addressing my goals or even thinking about them. 2020 is quickly wrapping up and I am a bit way behind. I have been working on the dresser that has been sitting in my garage since 2015. It is an old dresser that I that I want to restore to its former beauty. I stripped the drawers a few years ago and then neglected it. I am going to finish that damn thing in 2020!
At the beginning of the year, I mapped out my health, wealth and happiness goals and posted them here on My Little Blue Kayak. For some reason, I forgot to put them on my Google Keep Page so I didn’t look at them every time I turned on the computer. BIG mistake! My goals are in danger of becoming useless!
Do you ever feel two ways about something at the same time? I am staring at a painting, that was created by an individual with a developmental disability at my old job. It is a really beautiful painting of 10 elephants on a green and yellow background. I purchased it about 10 years ago and love to look at it. At the same time though I get a little upset looking at it. We had hired a teacher to help people create and sell art but looking back he did too much. He wanted things to look a certain way and would get overly involved in the person’s work. I remember this client asking me if the teacher had to touch his stuff!
Writing annual goals is a great way to ensure you are living life according to your own terms. Living life in a way that is meaningful to you. Living a life that keeps you on your own personal path. Sharing my goals with you keeps me accountable and on my path of health, wealth and happiness. I also secretly hope to inspire you to strategize your own life by figuring out what is really important to you, how you want to live and developing a path to get there.
As always, I categorize my goals into 3 sections titled health, wealth and happiness. Here are my 2020 goals. You can read about what is most important to me on my Start Here Page.
It is that time of year again when we decide we need to eat better, exercise more, sleep longer, spend more time with loved ones; to be healthier, be a better person, and be happier.
On January 1st, many of us made one or more resolutions to improve our health, wealth and happiness. Now it is the middle of January and I would venture that at least 50% of these have been abandoned, forgotten or put off for another time. I gave up on making New Year’s Resolutions several years ago.
Every year I write goals for myself to keep me on the path of health, wealth and happiness. This year, I decided to review them early in December as I knew I would need to kick myself into gear on a few of them. I share them here to keep myself accountable and to give you some ideas on how I view this journey, I call my life! Back in February I wrote out my goals for this year in the post, “can you see your life?”. Check it out and then come back and see how I did!
Improve gut issues as evidenced by decreased symptoms – IMPROVED AND IN PROCESS Get blood work and annual physical- SCHEDULED for March Maintain weight under 139 pounds – DONE Complete a Whole30 – DONE Complete the Health Care Proxy forms – PROCRASTINATING!
New Vanguard account $3000 – This will happen this month Contribute $2000 to existing non-retirement accounts – DONE Max IRA $7000 – DONE Max HSA $3400- DONE Increase car fund by $2000- DONE Maintain income at 2018 level- Looks like I will be short. Set up beneficiaries for all accounts- PROCRASTINATING $500 set aside for lightweight kayak -DONE
Travel south for 1 month to visit family and friends – DONE Kayak in 5 new places – DONE 2 Bike/kayak/hike weekends away from home – DONE Earn 15 CEU’s for my OT license- 7 earned 8 to go. I will be busy the next few weeks! Health Coach 6 people (1:1 or group) – NOT DONE. I worked with 1 person Read 20 books- DONE! Keep a Gratitude Journal- DONE Increase monthly visitor stats to blog by 10% over 2018 levels – NOT DONE Post an average of 5 blog posts per month – NOT DONE (once again I tracked the lag and not the lead measures)
Some of my goals will be completed whether or not I write them down and stare at them every day. Maxing out my IRA, and HSA are simply my top priorities once I pay my monthly bills. Some of my goals are written down to make sure I pursue something that I think I want to do like my health coaching goal. I pushed myself a little to at least attempt to address this goal and although I didn’t meet it I am glad for the attempt. Not meeting my income goal is disappointing however I know why it didn’t happen and I made the decisions that led to it not happening. I can live with that!
For 2020, I am not sure how I will address my goals. I have set aside some time for some Strategic Planning and I will see what comes out of this. My honey and I want to travel south again to visit family and friends and to escape some cold and ice of winter in the Finger Lakes. We also hope to travel west this year to visit a bunch of National Parks.
As I wrote in my last post, my primary Occupational Therapy gig has dried up and I haven’t quite figured out how I will respond to this change. Luckily my other per diem job has had more hours lately and that has helped tremendously. Making sure my income is solid for the coming year is on my mind a lot but not in a nail biting anxiety driven kind of way. I just need to make sure my income in 2020 is enough to cover all of my expenses, max out my retirement accounts and cover taking 2 months away from home. I have strategized more complicated things than this!
Staying on the path to my destinations leads to success! Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
Living a meaningful life doesn’t happen by chance. You have to know what you want it to look like and develop strategies to make it happen. I figured out what I wanted my life to look like about 7 years ago. Annual goals are just one of the strategies I use to keep me on my path. This is what I wrote down seven years ago – and it still rings true.
MY DESTINATION
I want my home to be relaxing, simple, joyful and low maintenance
I want to earn my living doing work that I find meaningful and that brings others to a better place/space
I want to be debt free leaving my options for semi-retirement wide open
I want to share my life with a partner that enjoys the simple things in life that I have to offer
I want to spend my time doing things I enjoy with people I care about
I want to do my part to leave this earth a better place then I found it
I want to live below my means with a focus on people, relationships, the environment – not stuff
When you know what you want and why you want it – figuring out the how you are going to get it is fun. Challenging but fun! I have some strategic planning to do!
Never stop learning. I mean it. Never stop. It is the most critical factor I can think of that is required to live a meaningful life. I don’t know about you, but I believe living a meaningful life is way cooler than living a mediocre one. I have tried (somewhat unsuccessfully) to build a few new habits this year. I wanted to blog for 5 minutes every day in order to post on My Little Blue Kayak 5x per month. Instead, I have been in a major slump all summer and am now kicking myself in the pants! I wanted to earn at least 1 CEU (continuing education credit) per month in order to earn 15 for the year. I believe I have earned 6 so far.
It is easy to write goals and even easier to promptly forget to address them. Writing this blog is one way I push myself to do better, to be better. Let’s face it, having to share one’s failures has a way of motivating one to do better. I know why I didn’t blog for 5 minutes every day, I know why I didn’t earn 1 CEU per month. I don’t need to make excuses, I need to do better. If you want to read about my goals, check out these posts. 5 Minutes is Easy, 2018 Goal Review, A Year in Review. As you can see, writing goals is important to me and finding ways to push myself to do and be better is critical if I want my life to mean something.
A few months ago, I wrote about the idea that developing good habits will lead to success. I talked about purchasing an APP called “Productive” that I wanted to use to help me develop better habits. I decided to follow-up on that post to help me stay on track toward reaching some of my 2019 goals!
This year, I have a goal to post an average of 5 blog posts per month. The reason this is important to me is that I find that writing on this blog is one of the tools I use to keep sane! Writing is a form of therapy for me and reaching this goal will help me nurture my mental health.
2019 is in full swing and it is time I finalized my annual goals. I try to live my life strategically, spending as much time figuratively and literally in my happy place (My Little Blue Kayak) where I make my best decisions in pursuit of health, wealth and happiness. When sitting in my kayak, I can really see my life. I can see how it mirrors the life I want to be living and where it comes up a bit short! Writing annual goals is one way I try to make course corrections to keep me on my path. I use health, wealth and happiness as my goal categories and loosely define them as:
My job as an Occupational Therapist at a Nursing Home has taught me to be persistent. If I am scheduled for 75 minutes with a patient, my boss doesn’t want to hear that I only got 60 minutes. Sometimes, I want to listen to my heart when someone starts complaining that they didn’t sleep or are in pain or that they have company. Quite often though, I have to listen to my head.
Getting out of bed may sound like the worst possible torture to someone who doesn’t feel well, but in reality, it is often exactly what they need. So, I often need to go back to see the same person 3x during the day in order to get my 75 minutes. I have to bother them despite the fact that they have tried to refuse me, I have to ask them again to get out of bed, to sit on the edge of the bed or to lift some light weights while in bed. Some days, I walk in someone’s room and before I even introduce myself they groan or roll their eyes. They know I am a therapist before I say a word and they know I am going to be pushy.
2018 is long gone and it is past time that I took a peek at the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year to see how I fared. Overall, I am pleased with how I did and have started the process of writing my 2019 goals. I wonder what it is like to be one of those people who have annual goals written by the beginning of the year. I wonder, but I don’t stress about or even bother to dream about it!
