Are You Ready for the End of Q1?

Hard to believe, winter is behind us and the first quarter almost so. If you pay much attention to the national news, it's been a tough year. But the news only tells part of the story...the part that makes you scared and tuned in, and the part that makes the ratings and thus advertising income go up.

Have you made progress toward your goals for this year?

Have you dreamed up new projects?

Watch out -- the Mixonian Goal Police may be searching for you as your read this. ;-)

The feeling that you're not getting anywhere, that spinning your wheels sensation, is nothing but frustrating, possible depressing. That's why writing things down lends objectivity -- you see that you are making progress, at least on paper, even when it doesn't feel like it.

One of the high points of defending my dissertation was marking it off my goal list. Now I see every day, on my index card and in my journal, a big goal crossed off. That is a postive reminder that despite all evidence to the contrary (in my mind), I really do get stuff done.

Jack Canfield suggests taking 5 action steps every day toward your biggest goal, and then there's no way you can't make it. Well, 5 steps every day seems like a bit much to me. At least for some days. Still he makes a valid point; even if you just take 10 action steps in a week, you'll still make it.

I read in last month's Inc. magazine in an article by Joel Brodsky an interesting point of view from a venture capitalist. He had asked to her prepare a presentation on why new businesses fail. This was her response:

That would be boring. They all fail for the same reason. People just stop working on their business.

Even if your goal is not entreprenuerial exactly, it's the same thing. Keep moving forward, and you'll reach that goal...and set a new one just as quickly.

Short Story About Achieving a Goal

There once was this mom who loved her life of spending loads of time with her kids and teaching a couple of courses at the local university. The university kept telling her that she didn't have the appropriate letters after her name, and if she didn't get them, she would lose that fun and easy job. So she started on this journey to get the three magical letters: p, h, and d.

She learned a lot more than she thought she would. The process of finding the letters was also a lot longer and more expensive than she had anticipated. The journey often felt lonely and too difficult to possibly be worth it. Fortunately her friends and family always rallied to her side, encouraged her, and after six years of slogging away on this, she's made it to the last stretch.

Having the three letters within her grasp now feels good -- a goal set and achieved always does. Marking off each step along the way also feels rewarding. Crossing out "successfully defend dissertation" felt fabulous.

There are many lessons from this experience, and one of them is to live life every day, not just after you cross off the goal. For while completing it is great, it does not make up for a life not lived. Fortunately, the heroine of this short story feels confident that she did indeed, live her life throughout the whole process.

And while she is happy to have this part behind her, the happiness comes from the daily decision to be happy now. And while daily euphoria may be out of reach, a daily dose of happiness is surely fuel for achieving all your goals.

Your Achievements for this Year

If you're like most people, you've been mentally reviewing events of this year; usually it's a mix of things we liked, and things we're not that crazy about. However, I must say that for me, it's been a very good year.

Those of you who are divorced, or who are close to someone who's had that experience, can all appreciate a year without divorce. Or maybe for someone else, it's a year without surgery, a year without chemotherapy, a year without losing a job.

So, a year with no separations, divorce, moves or job changes, made for a very smooth 2008 for my family. However, I know a lot of you facing health challenges,financial anxiety, and even the loss of a loved one. One cannot deny the appearance of sorrowful developments, the question really is how to respond to them.

Fortunately, a dear reader sent me some insight into this very question yesterday morning. She shared with me a different perspective on the word "joy" which she got from a young mother who recently died of cancer. This young woman named Emilie gained rich understanding in reading a passage from Kitchen Table Wisdom, a book of reflections by Rachel Naomi Remen:

Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional will to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us … the willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life, or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than to happiness.



No matter what you're facing, it's worthwhile to stop and take account of what you have accomplished, given the resources and constraints of your situation.

I just today turned in another chapter of my dissertation, and my first impulse was to get super busy with other things, which I did. But I'm taking time right now to write out my accomplishments for 2008 as part of my preparing for the upcoming year.

I'll share some of mine just to get you thinking about yours:

- Swam at the ECU pool most weeks, usually twice. I'm now up to 80 laps.

- I turned in 4 chapters of my dissertation.

- I invested.

- I gave a birthday party for myself.

- I laughed till my sides ached while playing Scattergories (highly recommended game, btw.)

- I got the oil in my car changed twice, with no emotional breakdown (that was a 2007 event.)

- I started this blog.

- I got a business license, business checking account, and business cards.

- I bought a set of nice sheets.

- I travelled to Venezuela.

- I participated in an e-course called Great Big Dreams, by Christine Kane.

- I gave two academic presentations.

Well, you get the idea. I didn't win any lottery, I didn't finish my dissertation, I haven't bought a house...there are many things I would have liked to have accomplished. But keep in mind it's better to reach for the stars and fall a bit short, than to aim for the fence and hit it.

Take a moment and think, what did you accomplish this year? Write it down and celebrate.

Keep Calm and Carry On

My grandmother used to quote her mother saying, "Life gets tedious."

Bright new projects never seem tedious. That's why it's easy to start a new one, without finishing the pending projects first. You think, "I'll get back to it later, when I feel more inspired." Yeah, right.

That's not to say that some projects are not worth finishing. Definitely there are times that abandoning a once-promising venture is the right thing to do.

But moving on to other projects because the one you're with gets boring, clutters your life. You get into a habit of starting, but not finishing. That sort of habit empowers that nasty critical voice inside your head that reminds you that you "never" finish anything.

Mixonian is all for projects. But clearing out the clutter of ongoing or old projects eases the completion of a new one.

Take a look at your list of energy drains. What unfinished business do you need to take care of?

Keep calm and carry on. That was a popular slogan in Britain during World War I. It's rather handy to keep in mind these days as well.

100 More Days

Today is the first day of autumn. It's time for crisper weather, fall fashions, and shorter days. It's also time to reflect on what's going on in your life. The bottom line is, there are only 100 days left in this year.

You're all familiar with the benefits of goal setting. You're probably even more familiar with the frustration of not achieving your goals, especially not in the time frame you wanted.

Mixonian takes this opportunity to ask you a few questions, actually 16 questions about your life as it is presently constituted. These questions are related to your goals, but seen through the framework of steps in the right direction, rather than mission accomplished.

The steps in the right direction approach has two clear benefits. The first is that life will not suddenly change when you can cross certain things off your list. Not to deny the joy of crossing things off your list, but we all know, that if it's not one thing, it's another.

The second benefit is ceasing to see your life as a pass/fail dichotomy. Not reaching that New Year's Day resolution doesn't mean you should resign. Focus on the path, the journey, not the final destination.

So, here are your questions.

What can I do right now to move me closer to....

- healthier eating

- more exercise/physical movement

- resolution of any specific health concern

- a new source of income

- higher asset value

- new or renewed friendship

- expressing more appreciation to people

- feeling more gratitude for what I have

- a lighter attitude

- more creative expression

- learning a new skill (how about hip hop classes?)

- interesting work

- knocking something off my "energy drains" list

- listening

- laughing

- loving

It's beginning to sound like a word cloud. The saying goes that time waits for no man. What are you doing to shape the life you've always wanted?

Write Down Your Future

Do you think of life as something that happens to you, or something you create? Reality is a combination of what we think and do, and what happens to us, plus our reaction to outside events. We are co-creators of reality. If a farmer wants the reality of selling corn on the market at harvest time, he would not plant peanuts. Obviously.

The degree to which we co-create our lives, rather than simply living in reaction to all that happens, is somewhat our decision. Think of the personal quality of persistence, people who prevail through all kinds of obstacles to achieve their objectives. Persistence is a wonderful ability to see the desired outcome, even when it doesn't seem to correlate with current events.

Recently, in cleaning out a file cabinet, I ran across a list of goals I wrote down in 1988. I remember my dear parents had me write down life goals when I was 16 years old, and that in my early twenties, this 1988 list was replacing the earlier list which I had lost. If I ever looked at this list between 1988 and 2008, I certainly do not remember doing so. Nevertheless, it was unreal how many of those goals I had achieved in the subsequent two decades.

For example, I had written down, "get a PhD." At that time, I assumed that I would continue my studies in Economics, I had never even heard of the discipline of "Communication," in which I am now a doctoral candidate. In 1988 I no earthly idea how or where I would get a PhD; it sounded like something I'd like to do, and I wrote it down. And, now I've almost accomplished that objective.

Other completely, or significantly-completed goals include achieving my ideal body weight and learning German, travelling to certain parts of the world and having three children. I also wrote down the goal of writing a book, a work now in progress. I wrote down that I wanted to learn how to make croissants. My son recently learned how to do that, and frankly, that no longer interests me. I'd rather just eat the ones he makes every once in a while.

At a seminar at Merici Academy just over a year ago, I heard a speaker explain that a person is young at heart as long as she has dreams and goals. This speaker had learned this definition from an octogenarian.

Write down what you'd like your future to be. That's the first step to making it reality.

Make a New Friend

Today I met a new friend, and I think you'd like him as well. We can't talk to him because he died in 1975, but he left us some interesting thoughts. Arnold Toynbee (1889 - 1975) was an English historian and philosopher. Here are some quotes I found at http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/:

-- It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

-- America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. ;)

-- Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

-- Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.

Historians have a valuable perspective on things precisely because they get out of the current context. Have a magnificent Monday!