goal setting

I was lucky enough to attend a small goal-setting workshop yesterday.  It's nice to be coached and to get reminders of what audacious goals will look like.  We set some goals this summer before we moved (including the infamous try to eat 19/21 meals a week at home, which is SO challenging) but this is a great time for me to both revisit those and look toward the future.  Looking at what we set out to do, most of that has been accomplished.  We made the big move to Dallas, which was goal #1 for more than a year and pretty much took over our lives for awhile.  I finally got over myself and my fears and got certified to teach yoga.  Finding teaching jobs has been a process but it's going very smoothly.  I've been teaching a regular class since we moved here and will start a new one in two weeks.  I have another couple of places where I can substitute teach and attend classes for free.  I have my "dream job" working at a yoga/running store and interacting with amazing athletes and people on a daily basis.  Adam loves his new job.  Personally, we're exactly where we want to be right now and there's not much I want to change.  I hadn't really thought about it until we had a brief discussion last night about the Law of Attraction, meaning that we put all these goals on paper together and actively worked toward them and achieved them.  It's not by just magic or even just hard work that got us here, it was setting goals and being brave enough to actually take the steps to make them happen.  Instead of just saying that we're happy where we are, this is as good a time as any to look ahead and make goals for the future.   In our workshop, we're guided to make a 10 year vision and work our way down from 10 year goals to 5 year to 1 year.  Making the 10 year vision is HARD!  I had and still have to sit down to really process and think about what I envision my life, our life together like 10 years from now.  I have nine more days to get my goals honed down and ready to post in the store so this post is mostly just a chance for me to brainstorm a bit more and marinate on my goals.

Fitness/Health:
-Obviously, this one is on EVERY damn goal sheet I make in some form but I still (always) want to lose weight.  I am at the tip tippy top of the healthy weight range for my height and that is, quite frankly, unacceptable.  My problem with this goal is that I don't have a clear direction to get there and I need to think about the steps that I'm going to take to lose the weight and still maintain some moderation in my life and diet.
-Since my back issues started, I've been running more because it's been a pain-free way for me to exercise.  I also have some great company with our Running to Drink group and Adam's company pays for both of us to do a race a month if we choose.  I've been getting faster and I want to continue that and learn to sustain the speed over longer distances.  My previous PR in a half marathon is 2:22:00.  I want to run a sub-2 hour half in the next year.  Also, I want to do a sprint tri before the next five years is over.
-Yoga:  I want to continue practicing but also to grow.  I want to do an advanced class and/or workshop at least once per quarter and I want to learn to hold peacock pose for a minute.  In 10 years, I definitely still see myself actively teaching.  I think the ideal number while also being there for my family would be five classes per week.

Mayurasana (peacock pose) via Yoga Journal.  

Career:  

-My goals here are just all over the place!  10 years is a LONG TIME FROM NOW and I have a feeling our life will look very different now.  At times, I think that I want to consider homeschooling our kids (part of this is based on the personal goal to buy an older home and rehab it, staying in Dallas proper where public schools may not be our best option and I think I can 100% give my kids a better education at home than sending them to private school, just based on my own personal experience at private school as a kid).  Other times, when I think about that, it sounds so foreign and crunchy-granola-mom-ish to me that I'm so not sure where I want to go with all of this.  

-I do want to be teaching yoga and hopefully working at least part-time when we have kids.  I want to be there for our kids and be active in their lives (field trips, classes, activities, sports, etc.) but I also want to be there for myself by having some time outside of the home and bringing in some income.

-In ten years, I want to be able to teach the classes I want, when I want at the premier studios and gyms in the area.  I don't think I ever want to own my own studio, but I'd love to be a yoga director or group fitness director.

Personal:

-In ten years, I'd love to have a kid or maybe two.  This is an area where I really have trouble envisioning the future because it's so foreign from where we are now.  Higgins is plenty of responsibility (and money suck) for now!  

-I hope we will be in a position to purchase an existing older or historical home and remodel it to our taste and make it our perfect functional home.  This has been a goal that we've been tweaking and has changed based on where we are living in Dallas right now.  I always thought that we'd move to the suburbs and get a big house but we've come to the realization together that maybe we don't want that after all.  Neither of us wants to commute in the traditional sense.

-I want to be able to continue to travel.  My list of places that I want to visit is always growing at a much more rapid rate than I cross things off the list.  

-I hope we always have at least one dog in our home.  Higgins has changed my life and brightens every day.  I want my kids to grow up with family pets from the time we bring them home from the hospital.  I want to continue to pursue adoption and rescue of our dogs.  

It's always harder than it looks to start to process goals and look ahead at the future, especially because I'm quite satisfied with where I am.  But I didn't end up here by accident, it took setting the goals and working toward them.  If I want to end up at my 10 year vision, it will take more of the same goal-setting and goal-attaining.