Goals

I tell my kids two things about goals:
1.  It's not a real goal if all your goals have the same level of priority and
2.  You can't achieve a goal if you never make it.

I've been having an internal struggle with both of these things lately.  But the second one is what I want to focus on:

If you don't make a goal, you can't achieve it.  I've put my health/weight issue in a deep freezer.  It's not even gotten to the thaw stage, let alone reached a back burner.

I am ashamed of myself and what I have let myself become.  For a while, I could set that shame aside and not think about it because I had to work on the debt issue and I didn't have time or energy to focus on my weight. Then when I started revisiting my emotional state of mind around my weight I realized that I'm scared to do anything again because I have done exercise and diets successfully before, so here I am again - at an all time high for my weight.  This time it coincides with a low on job satisfaction.  I like where I work, but I am not sure I like being an admin?  But that is for another blog - maybe.  At least it's not for now. :)

I keep struggling with should I let myself make a goal and fail?  If I fail, will that affect my how satisfied I am with my job? The more unhappy I am with my personal choices in life, the more unhappy I am at work.

I know it's me and not them.  I know that I am the issue.  I am the one that struggles with being friendly, I am the one that has reverted into an introverted social shell that makes me less and less likely to "like" people.  I am somewhat depressed.  Not clinical, suicidal but just down on myself and I feel stuck - again.

The thing is, I am 43, I have felt stuck a lot in life.  The hard part is I haven't done much to change that in my 43 years of life.  Most of the time life circumstances change it for me.

So here I am.  I'm overweight and I have zero activity in my life.  I don't choose to eat healthy and it is all my fault.  I have time to be active now, but I don't take it, I could spend the energy on eating healthy, but I choose not to, I'm lazy and I'm scared, and I've let myself hide behind insecurities for a long time now, so long that it is harder and harder to turn the corner on this one.

But tonight, after weeks of trying to decide what should I do.  I think I have my first break through. I've been considering joining a gym, but I don't want to waste the money.  I have little to no faith in myself and I finally have let myself accept that it's not "to gym or not to gym" it is "to goal or not to goal".  If I don't set a goal, I won't achieve it and the gym may be a means to achieving a goal, but it is not a goal.  But to set a goal and to not achieve it means failure and I have such a long list of personal failures that I'm overwhelmed with insecurity.  How do you stop being as insecure?  You bank some wins.  I haven't banked any emotional wins in a while. I also haven't tried in a long time.

So, the first step to achieving a goal is to make it and for me it's not a goal if I haven't written it out on paper.  If it isn't in writing it is just a thought that I can choose to ignore or not, if it is in writing and has been shared it becomes  real.  Real can be tough.

So with this - I set out to make a real goal.  Chad and I did this a little over 2 years ago with our finances and it is working, slowly but it is working.  So here is my goal:

I want to lose 100 lbs over the next year.  Saying that out loud scares me and overwhelms me and brings my shame to the raw surface, but anyone looking at me knows that I need to lose the weight, so here's to making the first step to not giving up or giving in .....

Being fat, lazy and scared are not options any more.  Today - I am choosing to set a goal and tomorrow I'm going to start achieving it by starting my first gym membership.