Mid-Year Goals Check-in

Happy Monday! Somehow it’s August, and I thought it would be a good time to check in on the annual goals I set for myself back in January for 2016/my 30th birthday. Here’s what I envisioned for myself a little over 6 months ago:

And here’s the progress I’ve made:

Total and utter success, wouldn’t you say?

Okay so I did achieve the elusive pants-buying goal. And my kitchen is definitely under construction. And I did hobble through Ragnar Trails Cape Cod.

But on the whole, I would not say that this year has gone the way I hoped or planned. I’m not going to go back into the whole story of my running injury (feel free to catch up if you’re interested), but the most recent development is that I also decided to give up Ragnar Trails and the 50-mile ultramarathon I’m registered for in November. I had been holding out hope that my healing would be smooth and I did start to build mileage back up for the beginning of the ultra training, but the reality is that I’m still hurt. I’m doing Physical Therapy twice per week at 6:45am, I’m getting needles stabbed in my leg on the regular, I’m stretching, and I’m still hurt.

And that’s just how it goes sometimes. As I first started coming to terms with this injury five months ago, my mom recommended Daily Inspiration from The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. It’s a website that provides inspirational quotes every day. On one of the first days I started reading, this was the quote for the day:

The Law of Intention and Desire: Inherent in every intention and desire is the mechanics for its fulfillment. Intention and desire in the field of pure potentiality have infinite organizing power. When we introduce an intention in the fertile ground of pure potentiality, we put this infinite organizing power to work for us.

I will put the Law of Intention and Desire into effect by making a commitment to take the following steps:

* I will make a list of all my desires. I will carry this list with me wherever I go. I will look at this list before I go into my silence and meditation. I will look at it before I go to sleep at night. I will look at it when I wake up in the morning.

* I will release this list of my desires and surrender it to the womb of creation, trusting that when things don’t seem to go my way, there is a reason, and that the cosmic plan has designs for me much grander than even those I have conceived.

* I will remind myself to practice present-moment awareness in all my actions. I will refuse to allow obstacles to consume and dissipate the quality of my attention in the present moment. I will accept the present as it is, and manifest the future through my deepest, most cherished intentions and desires.

As a goals-oriented person who obviously does things like write down a list of my desires, I have found this inspiration to be so powerful. That moment when the quote transitions from “I will look at it when I wake up in the morning” to “I will release this list of my desires and surrender it to the womb of creation” makes my breath catch every time I read it. It’s hard not to cling so tightly to the goals that just aren’t meant to be that it overshadows the other wonderful things in my life…and it’s also hard not to just say “screw it, disappointment sucks, I just won’t set goals anymore.” The ability to have desires and work toward them with determination but also to surrender them and to live in the moment is such an important growth opportunity for me.

I look back on this inspiration constantly, and I wanted to share it with you today in case it’s meaningful for you. Now I’m off to enjoy the present! (Which today involves drinking iced coffee, plugging through the final stages of a huge project for work that I’ve been working on for 8 months and is finally coming to fruition this week, and watching the Olympics in the background — did you guys see the women’s cycling road race?!? I was jumping around the living room yelling to myself in that final spring to the finish….)