Make Realistic Goals

When the temperatures dipped into the 20s twice this week, I was so glad that I had set a realistic running goal for 2014.  Houston rarely gets temps that cold, so I opted to skip those two days and resume running in more palatable temperatures.  Had I not set my goal to allow for some yucky weather, early meetings and other conflicts, I could have become frustrated early in the year and abandoned the goal.  However, even with 2 missed days, I'm still on track and quite motivated to achieve my annual mileage.

Goals need to be ambitious, but realistic.

Start Again

Reboot sounds so technical.  However, starting again sounds so full of promise.

Whether we are human or machine, we sometimes need a break from continuous expectations.  Machines tend to let us know in gentle, or service impacting ways, that something needs to change.  As humans, we aren't usually as apt to realize or communicate that we've reached our limits of operating as we usually have operated.

Time out, restart, reboot or start again are all differently acceptable ways of positively accepting that something needs to change in order to realize different outcomes.

Starting again, with mutually endorsed objectives and mutually accepted unmet expectations, can be the human equivalent of a reboot.

Successful Group Thinking

Earlier this week, I had the chance to experience great group dynamics in a nonprofit board development meeting.  Five participants were board members and the other three were staff members. 

Some success attributes included:

• clear, common objective
• prepared committee chair
• engaged participants
• best interest of the organization at the heart of the proceedings
• candid, confidential discussion
• collaborative decision-making
• eagerness to consider every point of view
• positive acknowledgement of diverse suggestions

By embracing these attributes, this committee demonstrated the best of group dynamics.

How Do You Measure Success?

Swimming laps tonight provided me a change of perspective. I wish I could say that I enjoy exercise, but alas, that is not the case. I do, however, enjoy swimming. My nature is to set and exceed goals. I realized tonight that this sabotages my exercise objectives. Though I enjoy swimming, I assigned 100 lap objectives to my swimming. If I didn't have time to accomplish 100 laps, it discouraged me from swimming. A simple change of perspective will lead me to a healthier life. Rather than counting each lap as a percentage of the 100 self-imposed laps, I decided to count each lap as improving my health by 1%. Now, if I'm interrupted at 60 laps, I'll know that I'm 60% healthier than if I'd not gotten in the pool (and not a D student at 60% of 100). It worked exceptionally well. I was interrupted at x # of laps. Rather than trying to determine how many laps I'd completed, I started over. I completed 100 +++++ laps.

Hope you also begin to measure success incrementally.