Messy Monday: Goal Setting, Sharing Burdens, and Looking Ahead

This week's Messy Monday will hopefully encourage you as we come into the holidays and begin a new year. You matter to me. That is why I write. Your heart, mind, body, needs are worth investing in. Other's have done it for me, so I write for you.

Goal Setting: I have experienced goal setting with no goals met, some goals met, and all goals met. I have learned over the years a few handy tips I will share with you:

• The 1-3-5 format has been the single most helpful strategy I have ever used. If you want a copy let me know. I learned to use it from my coach and long time dear friend Terry Gurno. 
• Set FUN goals, things that will stretch you in different ways. For example, my last remaining goal for 2018 is to buy a pair of fantastic red shoes. I am not a shoe-a-holic at all and deliberately choosing to buy shoes because I have always wanted a pair, happens to be a stretch for me. 
• Don't wait until January of the new year to set goals. NOW is the best time to not only set them, but achieve them. 

If you want help, I can help you. Most people I know that achieve their goals work hard to do it, have people alongside them helping them reminding them their uniquely crafted purpose can be accomplished by no one else, and every goal set and met makes this happen. 

Sharing Burdens: The messiness of life can make a person feel overwhelmed and overcome by feelings of inadequacy, failure, and insignificance. This can be remedied by sharing your burdens in these ways: 

• Leaning into your faith. Wherever you are in your faith journey, lean in. If your faith is in God, lean there and pray, if it is in yourself, family or friends, lean there, regardless, you can't do it alone. 
• Trusted friends who can handle you speaking out your struggle without judgement and remind you of your value.
• Collaborate with trusted resources. For us, in this season of life (sons in elementary, middle and high school), we work with school administrations, teachers, counselors, youth pastors, and others who have navigated this season ahead of us. 

Don't hold your burdens close to your chest like a hand in poker. Bluffing your way through life or knowing you hold all the cards everyone else needs is equally unhelpful to you and those around you. 

Looking ahead: The rules of horseback riding - Eyes up, shoulders back, heels down. Where you look is where you'll go. My best friend and I went riding together all the time. She rode her quarter horse and I rode her little black Welsh pony named Licorice. That little thing dumped me more than once. Sometimes it was because I was looking down, hunched over, or had my legs bunched up. Sometimes I ended up looking down as I headed face first into the street/dirt/shrubs. Life feels like that, even if you don't have far to fall. 

One of the most powerful things I learned during my years in the saddle was what happens to my body when I look forward. My core holds me upright and centered, while the rest of me settles, softens, and becomes fluid with the movements of the horse. I haven't been in the saddle in years and I still remember that feeling. I use that awareness when dealing with hard things from being in labor, writing, parenting, doing a triathlon, etc.