How Life Goals Impacted my Family

For many, goal setting is being intentional towards a career aspiration, a financial target, or a health goal. For me, life goals were so much more. I was desperate to create a life I love, and one that I could find happiness every day. In short, this journey started because for me, life sucked and it was headed down a dark lonely path if something didn’t change. This is part of my story and how life goals impacted my family.

When I was a kid, I didn’t grow up pretending to be a mom. My only doll wasn’t a baby, it was a bride that I envisioned going to work in an office. I loved kids, adored them really. I just didn’t see myself as a mom. Fast forward a few years and I’m married to my love, and having children with him seemed naturally something I wanted. I knew then, that I wanted a family but I was also working towards my career as an Engineer. Could I have both? There were career women that had kids, so it seemed plausible for me to find a way to have both.

Jump a few years further and I’m working full time, so is my husband, and we have two lively boys we adore. We have the house, the careers, and the family. Life was perfect on paper but I was miserable, stressed, and overwhelmed. I felt like an awful mother and wife and couldn’t get my shit together long enough to enjoy even a single moment of my day. Between work and home, life was out of control. Demands from work had me feel like I had to sacrifice my relationships for my career, while if I set boundaries for my workday I’m sacrificing my career for my relationships. Where was the middle ground?

I didn’t have an answer at the time, but I knew deep down there had to be a better way for me. I just didn’t know what that looked like.

This is what I knew:

my health was on a downward spiral: physically, emotionally and mentally
my husband was worried about me but didn’t know how to help
yelling was common and it was becoming toxic to the home life
staying at work longer or bringing work home was common
my husband was more a roommate than a partner
the kids were scared to do things around me
I hated myself and how I was reacting to life around me

Even now, reading this list, I hurt for that old me and the damage I was creating for my family. I’m crying just reading the pain and sorrow within that list. I was desperate for another way. So I started down a path that has led me here. Did I know at the time that life goals would lead me here? Not a chance! Yet I’m very grateful to be here with you at this moment.

How Life Goals Impacted my Family

Have you ever had a moment of clarity (some people might call this a breaking point) where you say “that’s enough!”. This was me one night. It was another night of being miserable to myself and my family and I broke down wanting more from life. Slowly I created a picture of what I wanted my life to look like and over time this picture became clear to me. I didn’t have a goal-setting journal to help guide me during this time, I mostly forged my own path.

It was hard because I was going against what I thought to be “the norm” for goal-setting. I thought I was nuts doing it this way, so I hid most of what I did from the outside world. However, my family saw the results; they felt the results.

My life goals started with how I wanted my life to be at home, how I wanted my relationships with my kids and my husband to be. The connections I wanted to have with them. I wanted to be happy: happy with myself, my contribution to my family, and be happy with my life.

Slowly through trial and error, I unearthed expectations I had about myself and beliefs I carried that weren’t aligning with my life goals. I found ways to change myself so I could get closer and closer to those life goals.

In hindsight, having a mindset coach and a life-goal journal would have helped speed this process along but years ago I didn’t have those available to me. I have developed a life goal journal that I’m using now, so today my life goals are more defined.

You may be asking how did life goals impact your family.

Over the years, life changed for us at home. We found ways to simplify life a bit more so I could create the space needed for spending time with the kids and my husband. I re-trained myself to relax and be more present at the moment. This was a habit I needed to create so I could become healthier and improve my relationships.

However, after years of being on a constant cycle of doing, I found this challenging. I had to convince my brain to allow myself to slow down, so I set a life goal to trick my brain into thinking that “doing nothing” was working towards a life goal. This gave me permission to be with the kids and have fun without thinking about all the other things that needed to be done. I also discovered many more benefits of sitting in solitude over the years.

In doing this, I became more aware of my reactions to things and started to control how I reacted. I found ways to stop yelling at the kids and slowly started to build up that trust with them that I had lost. As they grew, I was able to build on that trust and this helped us intentionally coach our boys through their teen years and now our daughter through hers.

Our family is built on a solid foundation that wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t of changed how I was living my life years ago. I’m completely convinced this to be true. The path I was on was headed for disaster and I would have missed out on many happy times I’m sure. Now I have almost 20 years of memories where there were many more happy memories than sad ones. I can honestly say I find happiness every day and I’m not the same person I was years ago. Intentionally working towards these non-typical life goals saved my life and my life with my family.