I took a trip to Ottawa over the weekend to visit a friend. I was fortunate because the weather was fabulous and Autumn in Ontario can be spectacular if the leaves aren't blown off the trees early in the season. It was a beautiful drive, traffic was good and most of the construction seems to be winding down so I made good time.
Travelling always gives me some time to 'check in' with how I'm feeling on all levels and where I am in relation to what I had planned to accomplish by this point in the year. Since most of my friends live at least an hour away from me, I spend a fair amount of time travelling which in turn, gives me many opportunities over the year to 'check in'.
On this particular trip though I found that I was on track for a number of work related projects which I'm happy about and I'm 'off track' where my personal life is concerned; more specifically, I really hadn't had a lot of fun this year and the year is quickly drawing to a close. How did this happen? Why did it happen? and the most important question is "What can I do to change it NOW".
As I continued my drive, noticing the rolling hills and the array of autumn colours everywhere, I thought about my Goals for 2010 and I Goals I have mapped out for 2011 and it dawned on me that I had only created Goals for my work/career, I had not written any Goals around my personal life or the fun things I would like to do. It may seem strange to some people that someone would need to write goals for Fun, yet if you think about it, it really makes perfect sense. If fun to you is a tropical vacation in the dead of winter, then odds are, early in the year you began making plans around your winter escape. You probably considered when exactly you'd like to go and where. You then created a savings strategy so you could put money aside to pay for the trip and any extras you would need. So in effect, your vacation was the Goal you set and then you developed a strategy/plan to get you there. I had somehow forgotten to create Goals that would be fun, so all my travel this year has been for work and though I had talked about travelling for fun, I never set a date or made plans. While I always encourage my clients to create goals that are both career related and fun, I had somehow managed to overlook it in my own plans.
Often we need a change of scene, to see, hear and experience things in order to gain a new perspective on where we really are in relation to our goals; to figure out what's working, what's not, and as I found out, what's missing.
Fortunately, it's never too late to create a new goal, so I'm making sure I have fun goals set for the remainder of 2010 and I have updated my Goals for 2011 to include travel for pleasure and fun as well as travel for work. Life is all about finding the happy balance between work life and living life.
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