About 4 years ago, a whack of things weren’t going my way. I’d had a couple of career setbacks, my romantic life was nonexistent. I was sad and frustrated.
So I thought long and hard about what I really wanted. Not just: “I want it all!” but specifically: “I want x, y, and z.” I whittled it down to the things that mattered most to me, and set some very ambitious goals for myself. I figured: “Hey, even if I just achieve 50%, I’ll be ecstatic.” I wrote them all down, I created a dreamboard (cheesy but fun), and set to work achieving them.
I even set up emails to myself through FutureMe with check-ins, like: “It’s been a year, have you accomplished the goals you set for yourself this year?”
Somewhere over the past 2 years though, I’d forgotten that I’d set them. A few months ago, I received one of the reminder emails, and it was a pleasant surprise! While I hadn’t achieved everything, I was well on my way. (Don’t tell Z, but we’re actually ahead of schedule on some of the personal life stuff. At the time, I hadn’t thought I was going to meet him for years! Coming along when he did, he saved me months of eHarmony payments and many awkward dates.)
In hindsight, my goals were/are pretty tame. Fame and world domination did not make the cut (sorry World!)- turns out they’re not high on my priority list. I had some goals about the kind of relationship I wanted to be in, the kind of home I wanted, the kind of work I wanted to do, and how I wanted to be compensated for it.
I didn’t think I’d shared my dreams with others, but I must have shared a little bit. When I thought about the kind of home I wanted, I looked at some different furnishings, and really liked a specific lamp:
I must have told one of my friends that I liked it. My parents had a lamp with a ceramic horse-shaped base when I was little, and I loved it. I used to sit next to it and touch it. It was lost and I’d since had my eyes open for something like it – I’m a sucker for tasteful ceramic horse lamp.
My friend remembered and went in with some other friends to buy it when I got married. In fact, it was before I got married – they bought it when Z and I started dating, they were so sure this was it, and then they gave it to me when it was. I was touched. She’d had to cross a border for it, to drive about 300 miles.
Yesterday, when I was cleaning out some files, I found an old “goals” folder. When I opened it, there was the photo of the lamp. There I was: not only was I well along my way with the goals I’d written out, I was actually sitting next to a real version of that lamp.
It’s good to have goals; it’s good to dream and to work towards your dreams. And sometimes, when you share your dreams, the people who love you will help you accomplish them.
