Photo courtesy of Here North photography

  The last day of my weekend out in Michigan was an interesting one, for sure.  My wife hadn’t been feeling “right” for some time before our trip, and it had progressively gotten worse.  Being the typical man that I am, I didn’t think much of it and, basically, told her to suck it up and go rub some dirt in it (o_O).  I’m really bad with showing empathy for physical pain, since, like a lot of other guys, I was raised in the school of “be-a-man,” where a skinned knee is to be walked off with a smile and stitches are a DIY affair, if you have the time.  It’s not something I’m proud of, but I’m secretly annoyed at the average person’s intolerance for pain and I lose patience quickly.  As my punishment, I was sent to the local pharmacy on that cold Saturday morning, by myself in a strange town, to buy an unmistakeably female product…

 It was 11:45AM exactly, when a little pink plus sign changed my life forever.  What I had assumed were my wife’s exaggerated aches and pains had actually been very real symptoms of pregnancy.  It’s tough to describe in words all the things that went through my head at that moment, but I specifically remember taking a quick inventory of my life to date and realizing that I hadn’t accomplished everything I felt I needed to be a good father and complete person.  It’s not that I hadn’t had the time to do them, I just lacked the motivation.  I had put these things off out of sheer laziness for years.  Now, I was down to exactly 9 months to get them done. 

 It’s amazing how a life-changing event can provide you with the motivation to do things you might never have done.  And how quickly that motivation can be taken away.  A few days after our return to NJ, my wife started having some serious abdominal pain and bleeding.  Naturally, I feared the worst, and a trip to the doctor seemed to confirm it.  The doctor was “almost positive” she had miscarried.  All the goals I had set for myself and the life I had imagined would be in my care and keeping had gone just as quickly as they had appeared.  As I settled myself in for a nice long bout with depression, I had a bit of a realization:  while a child is certainly a worthwhile cause for whipping yourself into shape ASAP, it’s an artificial motivator.  I realized it was no different from someone offering me lots of money, or conversely, putting a gun to my head to get me to do something I didn’t want to.  As soon as the “motivation” was out of the picture, so was my drive to accomplish anything.  If I wanted to achieve all those things, I needed to provide my own motivation.

 They key to achieving things in life is, and has always been, setting goals.  If you don’t have goals in life, it’s like getting in your car and driving, but without a destination in mind or a route planned out.  Chances are, when you run out of gas, you won’t like where you’ve ended up.  Of course, that’s nothing new.  We’ve been hearing about the importance of goals for years.  The tough part is learning to set and achieve your goals in a way that keeps you motivated.  Here’s a few old tips with some modern touches on how to set goals for yourself.

 Step 1:  State and define your destination.  You can’t accomplish a goal if you don’t know what it is.  Your goal should be as detailed and specific as possible.  Saying “I want to be more spiritual”, or “I want to have more money” is not a very good goal.  Instead, it should be concrete and measurable / track-able so you’ll be sure that you’re making progress, or that you’ve accomplished it.  It helps if you write it down. 

 Step 2:  Plan your route.  If every journey begins with a single step, then every accomplishment begins with a single task.  Break your goal up into individual tasks and work on them one at a time.  Easy. I create a Word document with my goal as the title and all the info on how to get it done in bullet points below.  That way, I can cross off the things I’ve completed.

 Step 3:  Track your progress.  Driving across Pennsylvania is the worst part of the trip to Kalamazoo.  It’s frikkin’ long.  The mile markers on the side of the turnpike help you keep your sanity and gauge how much longer you have to go.  The same goes for tracking goals.  I like to use Don’t Break the Chain to help me keep track of my progress.  A low-fi alternative is to get a big calendar and mark a red ‘X’ on the days you accomplish a task (it can only be red).       

 Step 4:  Reward yourself.  Made it through PA in 5 hours?  Stretch your legs at the next rest stop, buy a local t-shirt and a Toblerone.  You earned it.  On your way to a goal, make sure to reward yourself periodically for completing a task or two.  The kind of reward can vary, just be smart about it.  If your goal is to lose weight and you’re half-way there, buy yourself a new outfit, not a $100 gift certificate to Old Country Buffet.

 Step 5:  Re-asses your goals.  Maybe you bit off more than you can chew, and you’d rather stay in Pittsburgh than keep driving to Kalamazoo.  That’s cool.  Sometimes, our goals can be unrealistic.  Don’t get discouraged, just change your goal to more accurately align with, you know, reality.

 Well, that’s pretty much it.  Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’ve still only got nine months to get myself together ;).