Setting goals: body, spirit, soul and mind

I feel it’s important that everyone set long term goals for themselves in four areas: Body, Spirit, Soul and Mind. Body goals focus on the physical, Spirit on the artistic, Soul on the philosophical, and Mind on the career.

Many times, people set goals in one area of their lives without considering all the aspects of wellness. Consider this definition provided by the Wellness Institute: “Wellness is an active process through which people become aware of, and make choices toward, a more successful existence.” Their “dimensions of wellness” are more complex, but are in essence quite similar to mine:

I was thinking about what I could do this summer help my children be successful in school. My son is a junior in High School. He struggles with attention issues and spends too much time avoiding homework. Frustratingly, he also often forgets to turn in completed work on time. My daughter is a freshman. She is quieter about her struggles with school but still needs support when approaching challenging subjects. Too often, she is satisfied with producing lower quality work that requires minimal effort.

Study Skills Series

A big part of their struggle is that they have never learned practical study skills. They lacked the basic times management and organizational skills practiced by successful lifetime learners. So I decided to put together a series on study and life skills. Lucky for me, this turned out to be a small step toward my own wellness goals. I can’t be serene if I am pulling my hair out trying to get my son to start his homework.

The study skills series I developed for them has five parts:

1. Organization tactics
2. Reading quickly and with comprehension
3. Active listening and note taking
4. Research and essay writing
5. Studying and test taking

Setting Goals

At the start of the this summer, I was working with my kids to encourage them to think about their own wellness goals. We focused on defining interim steps they could do to meet their own five year goals. Not surprisingly, their Mind goals revolve around their futures at college and art school respectively. As a result, it was challenging for them to think about their goals that were not related to school. Their focus was on their plans to get into college and art school. As a student athlete, my son had challenges developing artistic goals. As an artist, my daughter had difficulty with Body and Mind goals.

I recommended that they start by looking five years out and setting stretch goals that they wanted to work towards. When they had those targets clearly in mind, I encouraged them to set medium and short term plans to work toward meeting those goals. I asked them to think about how what they could can do to reach their long term goals in the next year, in the next six months, in the next month, this week, today.

Using the Goal Worksheet

To help, I developed a goal setting worksheet them think about their goals. It includes several sections. One for things they could do this week or this month, One for things they could do over the summer. Afother for things they could do over the next school year. I asked them to focus on how these actions would help them get into college or art school but also to be successful there.

Setting My Own Goals

To be a good example, I set my own five year goals:

• Body: Compete as a Triathlete
• Spirit: Write a novel
• Soul: Become a part of a women’s study group
• Mind: Serenity, security and control

Clearly, I had been quietly thinking about my own goals while researching the goal setting section I was immediately able to write them down. In setting and reviewing my own goals, I found I had to agree with the Wellness Institute’s assessment that “a person becomes aware of the interconnectedness of each dimension and how they contribute to healthy living”. My long term goals are overlapping or at least interrelated but they led me, in a roundabout way, to I creating this website.

Life Learning Skills

A few weeks later, I was talking with a colleague about her own kids and their struggles. I mentioned my study skills series. I showed her some of the first section on organization. She suggested that I create a version for the team at work. In thinking this through, I realized the series would need to be changed only slightly to work in a business setting. By changing the focus of the writing module to emails and business reports rather than essays and by extending the studying module to cover memory improvement and the continuous process of learning new skills and technologies, I was able to develop a useful series applicable in a business environment.

1. Being organized
2. Reading quickly and with comprehension
3. Active listening and note taking
4. Research and email/report writing
5. Memory and lifelong learning

Creating this Site

I decided to use this site as a forum to publish my research and insights while at the same time, hopefully, making progress toward by own Mind and Artistic goals by writing regularly and publishing content that is useful to students of all ages and career stages. My greatest strength is an ability to absorb a large amount of complex information, organize it and then present it for others to use in a way that makes sense for them. I can create technical requirements from business needs and explain the business benefits of technology. I can define and improve operational processes. For example, finding workarounds that use existing tools to accomplish new tasks. In addition, I can create presentations and reports that synthesize information from multiple sources and present workable recommendations and strategies to move a group toward with intention to an objective.

Reach out to me if you are interested in learning more or would like to book me to present at your organization or school. I am also available for one-on-one coaching.