goals

I’m reading Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher. It’s about getting use all your interests, passions and hobbies and is way more helpful than I anticipated. She calls people who are interested in lots of things “scanners”, separates scanners into cyclical and sequential scanners, and separates those into subtypes.

I love her examples of talking to people and helping them find a way to live that works well for who they are, finding ways right around any stuckness they might be feeling. I want to do that for myself. I can relate to a lot the descriptions of the 9 subtypes of scanners. In an effort to find my patterns, I wrote down everything I could remember being interested in and everything I remember liking to do during different times of my life.

Today I realized, hey, I have ALL my journals here! I have my old journals stored in a trunk and I brought my ten most recent journals with me on my travels so my subletor wouldn’t stumble across them. I have (about) 42 journals! Can you believe it? Maybe “42″ really is the answer to the ultimate question.

If you want to play along at home, this is what I’m doing as I go through my journals:

I focus on these things as I read:

1. Topics I was interested in
2. The essence of what I was looking for when researching my interests
3. What I was doing
4. What goals I had (What I thought I should be doing)
5. Fears about what I was doing with my life
6. Things that worked/how I functioned best
7. What was going on when I was happy

Having a focus is helpful because I don’t get bogged down in the potentially depressing and cringe worthy things I wrote.

I have a different piece of paper for each topic and write down anything that comes up for each topic.

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I’ve been reading, thinking, and making notes about living a healthier and happier life, I want to work on about 3 small life-style goals a month, and I want to share what I’m doing with all of you who read my blog.

I’m investigating goal tracking software that will hopefully help me track and share my progress. I’ve been looking for a goal-tracking Wordpress plug in, or some kind of blog badge where I can give myself some virtual stars everyday to track my progress. Here is what I’ve found so far:

1. GoalsTogether you can type in a goal, share it, and it has a blog badge, but there is no simple way to check off completing the goal. There is a space where you write the percentage complete the goal is. 0-100%, I guess you just keep going back and changing the number everyday. Won’t work for my purposes.
2. Move Mountains has a very useful and easy to understand way of entering your goals, plus great advice for making and managing your goals. I recommend checking this one out if you don’t care about adding the goal tracker to your blog or website.
3. MyProgress.com I didn’t get too far into setting goals with My Progress Log. It kind of creeped me out during the registration phase. It wanted to know exactly where I live and my occupation. I started to suspect that my info was going to be used by marketers in the near future. Once I registered, my front page encouraged me to input my earnings. After all, as it says on My Progress, “Your profitability is essential when it comes to figuring out what a person you are.” Not the one for me.
4. SuperViva I like the tone of the site. It seems fun, friendly and open. It seems like a fun way to list all of the things I want to do, places I want to travel, books and movies I want to see etc… It would work for all kinds of lists. You can add the list to your web page or social networking site. Looking at this site made me realize that I don’t really want a goal checklist as much as I want a habit tracker. I want a daily checklist kind of tracker. Still searching for the tool I want to use.

I found these goal tracking tools at Mashable, you can go there to see more tools, screen shots, and longer descriptions.

After looking at all these goal tracking tools, I realized that:

What I really need for my purposes is a HABIT tracker!

Tune in tomorrow as I rate and review online Habit Trackers.

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My mom is (very happily) married to her 4th husband, so even though I am single, I have seen a lot of different types of marriages up close and I feel that I am highly qualified to answer this question. (Just kidding, I think everyone is highly qualified to answer this question. That’s why I asked! :)

My answer begins with who you should marry:

I think it makes sense to marry someone you are crazy about, someone who lights up your life and twinkles your toes, and is a decent person who treats people kindly, who is willing to work on a relationship, and who has goals that are compatible with yours.

So, if things aren’t going well and you think maybe you want out, should you call it quits? I have three answers for you:

1. YES

I think that if people are in abusive relationships, they ought to get divorced RIGHT AWAY! Don’t try and fix it! Get thee out!  The hard part is, what is abusive? That can be a trickier to answer than you would think when you are in a relationship and much easier to see when you finally get out.

If someone hits you, sexually abuses anyone, or in any other way degrades your soul, then I would JUST LEAVE (make you sure you research how to do it safely if you are worried about the other person hurting you- make your safety your highest priority.)

2. MAYBE

I just read on the Divorce Busting site that 1/3 of the marriages ending in divorce are abusive. That means 2/3’s aren’t.
If you are not in an abusive marriage, and you never felt twinkly about the person you are with, and you don’t have kids, I just don’t know. My only advice is that you do everything you can to improve the relationship and even if you decide not to try and keep your marriage alive, at least do everything in your power to be a true friend to the person you married.

I think that if you do decide to get divorced even after you make every effort to improve your relationship, the thing that will comfort you is that you have a healthy relationship of some kind and that you treated and continue to treat the other person very well. (And who knows, you might find that you can create a very satisfying relationship with the person you are with after all.)

3.Do Your Best To Save Your Marriage

If you once felt twinkly about your partner, if the person just annoys the hell out of you, you have lost interest in them, if you feel repeatedly rejected because they have lost interest in you, if you no longer find sex satisfying or any other host of problems- but they are not abusive, and especially if you have kids,

Then I would say do EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING in your power to make it work.

I’m thinking about this right now because I stumbled across the site: Divorce Busting and while I am very, very glad that divorce exists for anyone in abusive relationships, and I HIGHLY recommend high tailing it out of there (you can be so much happier when you are with someone who treats you well, you won’t even believe it), there are many people whose families are torn asunder who probably could have mended things if they had just known how. That is really tragic.

I really wish some of my friends, and my friend’s parents had access to this information back in the day.
Especially interesting articles from the site:

1.  The Walk Away Wife Syndrome
2. Hopefully Ever After 
3. He Must Be Teething

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Don’t pay so much attention to obstacles that you can’t see your goal.

-Phylicia Rashad

It’s the traditional time of year for goals and I seem to be in synch with the universe. I’m thinking about my future. Every day, ok, every hour, I think of something new I want to do. Watching the caucus results makes me want to go into politics.  It’s so exciting! (I must be a true grown up now because I find politics interesting and I talk about my health.)

Then I watched Phylicia Rashad on the Tavis Smiley show and was inspired by her story to think that maybe I want to move to Mexico City. I have a good friend from Mexico City, maybe I could go with her!

Whatever I do, whatever you are doing, I think Phylicia Rashad’s advice is good. I love that woman. Good luck to you in the new year. Set your sights on what you really want, study, and don’t pay too much attention to the obstacles.

With love,

B.

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I got a goal workbook from a friend for Christmas. It looks like it will be very useful and I already started filling it out. I’m going to follow it up with a collage to keep me focused on my goals and to keep me inspired for the coming year.

You can download and print out the goal workbook here: www.tonyrobbins.com/pdfs/Momentum2006.pdf

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* Eat whatever I want to whenever I want to.
* Don’t eat anything I don’t want to. (I just discovered this one.)

* Only exercise if I feel like exercising.
* If I feel like moving, let myself move! (I just discovered this one!)

These decisions are about noticing how I feel and completely trusting that what I want to do is alright. What would taste good to me? What do I really want right now? Do I want to lay in bed for an hour, or go on a walk in the park, or take a long hot shower, or do an exercise tape I haven’t done in years and then stop after 14 minutes, or go running and then sprint on some blocks juse for fun?

It’s a huge leap of faith! You mean, I could just eat whatever I want to?? Really? Me? :) And still be alive and stuff? And not weigh 300 pounds and stuff?

You mean, I could just, like, exercise when I want to?? And then like, lay around or dance in my living room if I want to? Like I’m just some kind of animal? ;)

Here I am deciding to let myself eat whatever I desire and move when, if and how I desire to. (Sounds very hedonistic no? Scary to inner puritan, no?) When I first made the decision to NEVER DIET AGAIN, about 2 years ago, I ate hot pockets everyday for about a month. Then I went through a licorice phase. I gained 25 pounds!

And then I eventually, blessedly, stopped obsessing about food.

I stopped eating more than I wanted to at parties because I knew, but really knew that I could eat more later if I felt like it. I stopped finishing all my chips if I wasn’t in the mood for chips, because I knew, I mean really knew that I could have more chips if ever I wanted to. I mean, it is amazingly freeing to stop obsessing about food. You of the long time dieters know how much brain energy goes into thinking about food. Imagine my relief.

You know which countries don’t have more depressed woman than men? The countries where women don’t diet.

But! You say, I don’t want to gain 25 pounds and have my arteries clogged with hot pockets! I know, I know, me neither. But I was even more sick of dieting or even being hyper alert about eating “healthy.” I made a full committment to never diet again whatever the results, and the results were not leading to many health goals at first, but strangely, I think this process of following my desires has now led me on a journey of having health and energy. Tune in tomorrow for the super secret of my success. Wait, that sounds too cheeky. Tune in tomorrow for the super secrets of my ordinary life of being fairly healthy and freeing up my brain to think about whatever I want to think about!

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I want to write a song that Bob Dylan sings.

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Good Boss

• Is focused on being effective.
• Knows what I do, what I like to do, what my goals are.
• Lets me own my job.
• Praises me when I take initiative.
• Encourages me to take on projects that advance our goals at work and that also advance my career goals and are in my areas of interest.
• Knows what’s going on overall at work and has a vision.
• Is very smart. I learn a lot from him.
• Is willing and eager to learn from me.
• Keeps our group informed about what is going in our wider organization and gives us the big picture about how we fit in.
• Treats us like we are strategic partners and listens to our ideas, and lets us run with the ones that we have made a good case for.
• Believes that people are capable, and interested in achieving their own goals.
• Knows how to help people achieve their goals while achieving organizational goals.
• The way he treats us is motivating.
• If I had my own company, I would hire him.

Bad Boss

• Is focused on feeling important.
• Doesn’t know what I do, or care what I want.
• Tries to own the people beneath him and their job.
• Micro-manges to the point of absurdity.
• Gets angry if people do something without asking him first.
• Yet is not helpful and does not know what is going on.
• Is not willing to learn from employees, sometimes not allowing them to talk.
• If I had my own company, I would fire him.
• Believes that people are bad and that if you don’t keep a tight reign on them, they will try to get away with stuff.
• When he talks to me, I want to quit.
• If owned the company, I would fire him.

This post references this post about bosses.
(Note: I went with all male pronouns for convenience.)

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Let’s hear it for good bosses! My boss knows what I do and what I like to do. He lets me own my job and praises me when I take initiative. He encourages me to take on projects that advance our goals at work and that also advance my career and are in my areas of interest. He knows what’s going on overall, is very smart, and never micro-manages my work. At our meetings, he keeps our group informed about the what is going in our wider organization and gives us the big picture about how we fit in. He talks to us like we are strategic partners and listens to our ideas and lets us run with the ones that we have made a good case for. He is a motivating. I feel like I can actually contribute and grow in this job.

There is another person who works here who is not my boss but is about at my boss’s level. She was the boss of the person, who quit abruptly, who used to be in my position. I learned this slowly over time and it made sense of the previously puzzling decision to place me in the department I am in. She micro-manages the people under her to the hilt. In fact, they are required to cc her on every work email they send out. Interestingly though, she seems to have no idea about what is actually going on or about what her people do.

I’m mostly in a different area than her, thank goodness, but I’ve been given a talking to twice by her. Today I was prepared, but last time she literally didn’t let me speak and I had to close the door after she left and cry (just a little) in frustration. It made me want to quit. Today I was given a talking to for handling a confusing situation well. She told me that in the future, I should ask her or someone else in authority what to do. This highlighted the contrast between her and my boss so well. If I took the whole story to him right now, he would be impressed at my initiative and problem solving skills and tell me to keep up the good work. She is just mad that she wasn’t kept in the loop, I suppose.

I could make this whole post a bullet point list about good and bad bosses. In this case I think it comes down to:

Good boss

• Wants to give his team power.

Bad boss

• Wants to take power away.

pss: If anyone from my work ever sees this, I’m talking about a different job.
pss: I think I will make a list.

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Written for me, by me, on this day

Go out and meet people. Be yourself. Be radiant! Radiate who you really are! Accept yourself! Wear clothes you like! Be ye not afraid. Don’t go if you don’t want to go! Forget should! Go forth boldly pursuing your goals. You do not have to give someone a chance! Make friends with who you please. Don’t apologize for yourself- whatever it is. Do what you want. Look out after your own best interest. Be wildly, exuberantly responsive when you can, with clear boundaries. You deserve to have boundaries. Just be clear and NO pressure to make promises that you don’t want to keep… go forth boldly to fulfill your dreams.

I read that a good way to solve your problems is to write a question at the top of the page and then write and write and write until you get something brilliant and usable. I must be a genius, because this is what I got in the first paragraph ;) Well, at least it is bold like William Blake says to be.

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Hey all ya’ll! Just got back from my first day of work. Here is my advice to me and you. If you have additional advice, I’d love to hear it!

1. Make everything as convenient as possible: convenient haircut, under 10 minute meals, convenient transportation. Make it as easy on yourself as possible.
2. You work for you. Do your best job you can for your company, and remember to keep your list of accomplishments updated and to keep your eyes open for opportunity. Don’t misplace your loyalties. Don’t bond to an entity that can’t bond back, and while doing your best job now, remember your long term goals.
3. Choose your tasks with awareness. As set in stone as job descriptions sounds, there is usually some leeway to follow different paths. Sometimes women are used to being in support positions and helping someone else achieve their dreams, even at work. Make sure you take what leeway you have in your job to create. Be the architect of your own dreams.
4. Decide not only what you will do, but how you will do it. I like to ask myself, how can I make this fun? I realized today that for me it is fun to have friendly relationships at work. Asking myself, “How can I make this fun?” reminded me to seek out human contact even though I was feeling shy.
5. Add pleasure to your daily routine. Do you just love a certain author? Get the book on tape to listen to while you drive to work. Put a postcard size replica of your favorite painting up in your cubicle.

I don’t know how parents can take care of their kids and work full time jobs. Working parents of the world, I salute you. Future husband, please start doing something that you can earn enough money working part time at and still help support our future family. I’ll work on that too.

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Really, a lot of what I do in my life is internal. Some years when it might have looked like I was accomplishing nothing, I was actually working really hard, going to therapy and doing other internal transformation work. Many of my goals have to do with how I’m feeling and the processes I use and how I think. I feel like it’s my soul journey. So, this summer I decided that I wanted and needed to focus on my soul journey again, thus began: The Summer of Transformation!

I am making progress. Soul journey progress is always faster and slower than I think it will be. Faster because the slow and steady inner work I do can change everything in my outer life nearly instantly. Slower because I feel impatient and want to hurry and do inner work which is just opposite of how inner work goes, for me anyway. For me, inner changes are usually a result of practices, very slow and steady practices like writing in my journal or just being with myself and noticing how I am feeling. By their very nature, they can’t be hurried through. One result that I am noticing is greater self-acceptance and a feeling that my desires are good. Oh, that feels refreshing. It’s such a little seeming shift, but it is huge. When you know you can trust yourself, you don’t have to fight with yourself. (Especially pertinant for people who relate to the enneagram personality type 1.)

This is one of my favorite poems in that vein.

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You can take the girl out of HPT, but you can’t take the human performance technology out of the girl. (And why would you want to? :) I myself can not write about it or read about it, so I’m going to talk all about me, me, me! (I can see now why the pop culture became very fluffy in times of war.)

So, I have this new job. I’m still in training. Tuesday will probably be my first day leading my own tour. I don’t believe in the product. Some people really like it, so I’m not putting down the product, just saying. At any rate, they are good at setting up an effective system at my new job.

Here is what I like: Your results are very clear. You know when you are doing well. It is not a secret when you are doing well. You are rewarded for doing well. Everybody claps for you when you do well. They continue training you after the initial training is over. Your bosses want you to make MORE money, as they clearly see how you are benefiting the company. (Contrast that with jobs where your salary is counted as a loss.) It’s amazing really.

Compare that to jobs where you have no idea what you are saposed to do. There is no clear tie between contribution and salary. Even if you wanted to learn how to make more money, you would have no idea who to ask to be your mentor as everyone’s salary is a secret. Your bosses want your salary to be a secret because they want to pay you as little as they possibly can. People are often annoyed when you achieve more and do not clap for you. There is something refreshingly clear cut about how this sales job is set up.

Plus, my people, (the people I trained with,) are all trying to help each other out. (My success doesn’t endanger anyone else’s success. YAY!) It’s like we have our own little success team. Today I found myself spontaneously wanting to ask my group what their long term goals are. What do they really want? I want to help them get that.

Today I wish you the sense and the skills to set up your own environment to optimize your success.

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[Update: Hi visitors! My meme never took off, but some people are coming by to find out if their myer's briggs types are compatible with another type. Research has found that the more letters you have in common, the more likely you are to get along well in marriage. However, of course, their are good and bad marriages of any personality combinations. You also have to take character, emotional maturity, and shared goals into account. The Tiegers do extensive research about marriages between different personality types and share it in a fun to read and useful way in this facinating book. It was really fun to read about my type and my old boyfreinds' types and also about my type and my mom's type. The book was right on. Warning: other meyer's briggs type books have all different kinds of theories about who is compatible, but most are based on the author's intuition and counseling experience, not research. Now, on to the previously scheduled post...]

Imitating the Friday Five, here’s what you do: Copy and paste the questions and post a link to your reply in the comments.

After reading the descriptions of the Myers Briggs types in the chart, answer the following questions as best you can. (scroll down after you click on the link to see the chart)

1. What type are you?
2. What type are you dating/married to, or would be interested in dating/marrying?
3. What type are your best friends/kindred spirits?
4. Which types are in your immediate family?
5. Which type did you most recently get in a fight with?
6. Which type did you talk to most recently?

My answers:

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ
ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ

More than one color means that personality type is the answer to more than one question, and I cheated a little on the immediate family answer because I have a teeny, tiny little immediate family, so I expanded to include my uncles, aunts, and grandparents, but no kids, ’cause they are still forming.

You can answer in the usual way, or if you want to answer in graphical form, like me, you can copy and paste these letters, and color and bold as needed.

ISTJ ISFJ INFJ INTJ
ISTP ISFP INFP INTP
ESTP ESFP ENFP ENTP
ESTJ ESFJ ENFJ ENTJ

Why this meme? I love typology- ye old temperaments were my introduction, then the Colors, then, the true type love of my life Myers-Briggs, and most recently, the Enneagram. I love typing my family and think genealogical charts should have a spot for the person’s type as well as more mundane things like their birth date. (Although some people think birthdate can be a type indicator..)

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Umm.. yes, while it’s true that it’s good to love yourself and if you don’t you might self-sabotage (see last post,) self sabotage can also be healthy! I forgot about that until today when I was listening to a CD of my old NLP instructor Nick Le Force. He reminded me that if you try and make a change that does not meet the needs of all parts of yourself, you might self-sabotage. You’ve got to consider ECOLOGY! Resistance may be an important signal to you that there are other important factors you need to consider as you create your goal.

Here is some web-based advice to deal with self-sabotage. John David Hoag writes about ecology issues that come up when creating goals:

“What do you want?” isn’t always easy to answer. We may have conflicting thoughts or feelings about it. We might welcome help to resolve an important issue. But beneath our desire for help we might not be entirely sure we want the issue resolved. It might be a sort of “inner secret” for us, even to ourselves. This is called an “ecology issue” in NLP. Unlike traditional therapy which calls it “resistance,” NLP doesn’t minimize or pathologize it. In NLP we understand that it is precisely those ecology issues that are the keys to unlocking new realms of potential. Before any change can take place — and reaching a goal is a change — resolving a problem is a change — the ecology must be attended to. Otherwise, we’ll be going nowhere fast on the road to our desired outcome. Our ecology issues can stop us — because they’re so important.

So, how do we figure out what those conflicting thoughts/feelings/needs are? Laura Moncur at Starling Fitness recommends writing it out, so does Sraightforward Coaching:

If you find yourself struggling to manifest a goal you have set yourself, try this exercise* to discover the hidden fears, beliefs and values that might be holding you back: write down all the reasons why you DON’T want that goal in your life. Let your darkest thoughts surrounding your goal reveal themselves on paper and keep writing until you can’t come up with any more. These are some of the fears, beliefs and consequences surrounding your goal or decision and they might include the one(s) that are holding you back. Once they are all out in the open, you may find some issues you need to work through before you are ready to achieve your target. Reframing or redefining your goal to address the conflicting value or belief could also work to integrate the goal with your personal ecology.

After asking yourself some good questions, NLP Weekly recommends giving yourself time:

Let the questions sink in.
Write them in your journal (you do have a journal, right?).
Read them before bed time and wait for answers.
You’ll get dreams, songs, words, flashes, memories, voices… don’t ignore them. It’s important to notice, note and acknowledge. Your brain doesn’t like keeping riddles unsolved.
Asking good questions and giving it time to find the answers with no pressure, is one the greatest talents you can develop.

Reading and thinking about ecology reminded me, once again, how important it is to treat myself kindly. If part of me is protesting, (which shows up in my weight loss goals as eating fattening food I don’t even want,) then instead of dragging those protesting parts of myself kicking and screaming, I can attend to myself, (listen!) and do my best to meet all my needs, address my concerns, and calm my fears. As you know, those protesting parts are hard to ignore. You might as well turn to them and say, “So, what do you want, anyway?”

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Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos - the trees, the clouds, everything.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

I was just reminded of how great Laura Moncur’s fitness blog is. Head on over to Starling Fitness and check it out. I read every article in the Motivation section. As I read about her internal struggles- the thoughts, the self-sabotage, I thought, there is no point in trying to trick myself into exercising because, until I wholly love and accept myself, there will always be some part of me that self-sabotages. Now I also remember that besides telling myself that I love myself, another way for me to understand that I am worthy of love and care is to show myself. One way to show myself that I love and care about myself is to eat healthy foods and do healthy exercise.

More tips for treating yourself like you are worthy of love and care:

• Buck societal trends: Reward yourself for what you do, not how you look. In fitness goals that translates to: consider yourself a success when you take actions towards your fitness goals, whatever the result on the scale.

• Be kind to yourself in little ways. Are you sitting in an uncomfortable position? Shift your body now, stretch, breathe deeply. Let yourself feel comfortable physically.

• Remember what activities you enjoy. Make doing activities you enjoy a priority in your life! If you love painting and think you don’t have time for the full blown hobby, take some time today to do a small sketch. Even giving yourself a little of what you love is a kindness. It’s better to give yourself something today than to withhold from yourself until you can have it perfectly.

• Don’t wait until you think you deserve love to be kind to yourself. Has anyone ever loved you unconditionally before? It’s time someone does. You can be that someone.

• If you have trouble unconditionally loving yourself… don’t get down on yourself for that! You can always step out one level from your current thoughts and acknowledge your thoughts or behavior and say “ok, I acknowledge that.” Sometimes it’s not the thought or behavior itself that hurts, but the meta-thought you have about it. For example, if you feel depressed just notice how you feel and avoid adding an additional layer of hatred, blame or guilt for what you are feeling. If you feel fat, just notice that, love yourself anyway and avoid adding an additional layer of anger or guilt or self-hatred. I think that is part of what “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” means.

Didn’t I start this entry by talking about fitness motivation? What does all this self-love talk have to do with that? Well, if you want to get fit, and then you create a plan, and then you follow that plan, probably nothing. BUT if you want to get fit, and then create a plan, and then you… try to do it and sometimes do it, but sometimes buy yourself donuts (or potato chips or…) even as another part of you is screaming ”NO!!”, or some part of you refuses to go running even though you know you‘d feel better if you did, or you lose weight and then freak out when someone gives you a compliment then… you may have a little self-sabotage going on. One way to deal with the self-sabatoger is to love the little bugger. Hug the dragon. As all of you is loved (by you,) you (all of you) will want what is best for you, because you will know/feel you are worthy of the best.

So, practice unconditionally loving yourself so you can be of one accord, want to be healthy, create a healthy plan, and simply follow it. In the meantime, use some of Laura’s motivation suggestions and gently drag yourself out to excercise. Be a good parent to yourself, and with all the kindness and compassion you can muster tell yourself, “I’m doing this because I love you, you’ll thank me when you’re older.”

For another look at positive self-talk,check out Norm Ephraim’s article.

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WOW. Steve Pavlina graduated from college in three semesters. Talk about time management. This guy is intense. We are probably almost polar opposites. I consciously took three years to get through two years of school so I could have plenty of extra time. Check out Steve Pavlina’s tips in this strong, energizing article. What do you think? I don’t like the part about cramming my time full, but there are some useful ideas in there:

When you work for yourself, it’s easy to spend a whole day at your desk and accomplish nothing of value. This almost always happens when you aren’t really clear about what it is you’re trying to do. In the moments when you regain your awareness, ask yourself, “What exactly is it that I’m trying to accomplish here?” You must know your destination with as much clarity as possible. This is one reason that all your goals must be specific, and they must be in writing. Your goals must be so clear that it would be possible for a stranger to look at your situation objectively and give you an absolute “yes” or “no” response as to whether you’ve accomplished each goal or not. If you cannot define your destination precisely, how will you know when you’ve arrived?

Unless you are a naturally hyper person, your enthusiasm is going to need daily reinforcement. I recommend either listening to motivational tapes or reading inspiring books or articles for at least fifteen minutes every day. Whenever I’ve stopped doing this, I’ve found that self-doubt always returns, and my productivity drops off. It’s truly amazing how constantly feeding your mind with positive material can maintain your enthusiasm indefinitely. And if you multitask, you can get this benefit without investing any extra time into it.

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Wow, I can’t believe its day 9 of the cleanse! I called my mom the other day and she said she was sticking to the cleanse, but she was gaining weight because she was eating a lot of cheese. “Cheese!” I exclaimed, betrayed, “but we aren’t eating any dairy!!” She hadn’t noticed that part. We agreed that we could eat yogurt. Then she had the nerve to ask me if she could eat a brownie. “No!” I said, “you can not eat a brownie!” Then I relented and said of course she could eat whatever she wanted to. However, I gave her the advice I saw over on Laura’s weight loss blog, and reminded her that if she asked, her husband would probably make brownies again.

So, what about me? I’m sticking to my cleanse, but am still having trouble eating as many veggies as I would like. I actually like vegetables, but am some what at a loss about what to do with them. I’d like a wok so I could eat [I meant to type "make" ha, Freudian slip! I really just want to EAT homemade stir fry!] homemade stir fry. This morning I came up with an innovative and yummy solution to my no milk and no soy rule (no soy- I’ll explain later.) I used coconut milk in my oatmeal, slices of apples and cinnamon. It was really good. Truly, I want to enjoy eating and have that be a pleasure in my life instead of a utilitarian function.

Exercise: Last Thursday I did my new old Firm video, “Total Body - Time Crunch Workout.” Its only 45 minutes long with simple and hokey and EFFECTIVE exercises. It’s so much easier for me to get myself to work out with weights than to go running, because I know working out with weights is going to show. When I first started working out with weights, (I used “I want those buns!“) I lost 2 inches off my butt in 3 workouts and I’m not exaggerating. My sister-friend told me, “I love your butt!” It still rings in my ear to this day, although the butt she loved is hidden and weak right now. I will raise my rear again! :)

Today I’m going to go try, for the first time ever, the Fitprime video “Strong Bear.” Its with Tracey Long and I can tell its going to be good and tough. I’ll let you know.

Oops! What I haven’t been doing: the P and B shakes. (I bet my mom hasn’t either!) I’ll get on that.

Weight loss: My scale has just (unfortunately, serendipitiously?) died. It’s ok though. From being quite in shape and trim to quite out of shape and plump, I have gained 3 to 5 pounds. That’s why I didn’t notice how out of shape I had gotten for awhile. So, I’ll go by the fit of my jeans and the jib of my… something. (I just wanted to say, “jib.”)

Good Luck in your fitness goals!

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Yes, sometimes I write to craigslist. This time I wrote just to say I was down and some people wrote back. Here it is:

Title: (women seeking men) I am bummed (this is actually just a rant - sorry)

I’m not sure why this is such a down time for me, but I’ve noticed that whenever I focus on finding romance I get down, because it’s just not one of those goals I can work towards and then predictably achieve. Sheesh. This is a tough one. I need to put myself in social situations so that I can meet my honey, but I can’t make it one of my goals that I focus on or it’s just depressing! hmmm.

Alright, I’m giving up on dating for awhile. I feel so much better when I do. Here is a site I just inadvertently surfed to which prompted this post: http://www.divorceinfo.com/divorcestinks.htm. I’ve never been divorced, and REALLY hope never to get divorced- breaking up hurts about as much as I want to hurt. Oy. So, the site reminded me that it’s good to be picky.

Like I said, this is just a rant, so don’t write. (If you send truly encouraging words, I will silently thank you.) I don’t think I’ll be writing or looking on

craigslist for awhile. Good look to all ya’ll.

People wrote back, here a couple excerpts:

“Holy Shit!!!!!!

I am so hearing what you are saying here…I have never tried to find the love of my heart on the net and then when I start looking it seems to always go nowhere…..

getting out to meet the one, yes, this is it..I have adjusted my Feng Shui to help, so we will just have to wait and see. but like you said when you say to yourself, I am not looking to meet you now I so do not have time and or the desire to feel the lonely and empty parts of me. so I stay busy telling myself that it will all happen in time, when the time is right. …”

“good luck to u :) yeah u might have what i have seasonal disorder :) keep-kickin-it-baby :) 420/24/7/365 PEACE”

Thanks nice craigslist people! Just as a side note: Have you noticed how much more confessional my posts have gotten! This must be a side-effect of writing blogs. I now have the audience I secretly imagined as I wrote in my actual paper journal. Let me know if I’m going overboard and just being too outrageously or, worse, annoyingly revealing. I will post art again! I’m just at the tail end of the semester and haven’t created any art lately. I am dreaming of a fresh drawing pad for Christmas and then I will draw in long meetings and on nice days in the park and will post it here and my page will once again (once again?) be full of beautiful and simple art, unhampered by words.

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