Throughout my life I’ve set rather lofty goals for myself. Usually, I achieve my goals at huge personal sacrifice to myself or to other things going on in my life. Or I don’t achieve my goals because I am overwhelmed and burned out from trying to accomplish too much, all at once. Recently, I read a great article by Paul Norwine. To summarize, rather than setting a series of goals, narrow your focus and concentrate on specific goals, one at a time. This allows you to a) have a life while achieving your goal and b) ups your success factor by a significant percent. Why? Well, you won’t be distracted by other goals for one. Second, you won’t overwhelm yourself or burn yourself out by doing too many new things too quickly. And god forbid you multi-task because then you may reach your goals but you won’t have paid the attention needed to learn from the process and enjoy the end result. And frankly, the end result may not be as good or powerful as it would have been with some single minded determination and focus.
My first goal is teaching the pets about the sacredness of Saturday and Sunday morning. I figure it can be done. It only took me eight of my daughter’s ten years on earth to teach her that waking Mommy before 9 AM on a weekend should only be indulged in when bleeding or because the house is on fire. Otherwise, the rule of thumb on weekends is for Drue to go to the bathroom, get her own drink of water and then snuggle up in her room, reading, until hearing the inevitable thump and moan that alerts the world that I am up. Drue has embraced this weekend rule with dignity and grace and even occasionally lets me sleep in until 10. My pets, however, are a different story.
