Please welcome to the Floricane blog: Laura Waite of One South Realty! Laura has participated in Insights® Explorations since the start of the series this Spring, so we thought we’d ask her what she learned at our third workshop.
Thank you Floricane for another engaging Insights® Explorations session! I found myself, for the first time in my life, considering a tattoo. How could an afternoon session at Floricane inspire a tattoo?
This workshop’s topic was goal setting, something I have never really prioritized nor considered myself good at. I’ve always thought: I am too busy to set goals; who has time to think about such frivolous things as goals when there is so much else to do? (Who has not felt that way?) I have my daily list of to-dos that I check off - are those not goals? (Turns out they’re tasks that can help me achieve big goals.)
Goal setting sounded selfish to me, and like a cliché (like something you’d “put on” for a job interview). Instead, I usually would focus on what’s simple and realistic, like paying the mortgage (I love checking that box; that's my big goal every month). Other goals have been spending quality time with family (I count my blessings when achieving that one) or doing a good job at work, and making people laugh.
At the Insights® Explorations session, we discussed the different traits associated with each color and the challenges those with each dominant energy may face. My green/yellow self was worried that my goals would center around making others happy rather than focusing on myself, and how to commit to goals. (If I do not commit to goals then I won't be disappointed, right?) The dominant blue energy people in my group were worried about too many details getting in the way of clear goals. The reds were concerned with being unrealistic and unreasonable.
We quickly decided that, for most, life goals would focus around these broad topics:
-Health
-Family/Relationships
-Job/Career/Community Service
-Self/Lifelong Learning
-Faith
-Social/Recreation
-Finances
I wanted to come up with a goal that would resonate with my priority topics from that list, that would resonate with personal mantra, my big picture, my singular sensation: my "tattoo" if you will. As someone who may be the last person in Richmond, VA with no ink, I often think: If I were to get a tattoo what would it be?
Most folks prioritized family and health being number one and two priorities, interchangeably. I proudly decided to go where no green/yellow people pleaser has gone before: I prioritized Self/Faith/Lifelong Learning as my number one goal area. If I am not able to set my main goal in life as myself, and learn to realize the importance of my own intentional contentment, satisfaction, and inner peace on a daily basis, then what good am I to any of the other areas? Does mental health not affect physical health and cause sickness? If I am relying on others for happiness, won't I always be disappointed? Is it not the simple things in life that we look back on with the fondest memories that warm our spirit?
We were asked a series of questions that were all meant to inspire goal setting—each phrased differently so as to appease all of us on the color wheel, including:
-How would you spend your time if you won $10 million in the lottery?
-What would you do if you found out today that you had six months to live?
-Looking back on your life what activities have given you the best feelings of fulfillment or importance?
-What activities are you able to lose yourself and time doing?
We ended by working through how our goals needed to be “SMART” to be useful: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results Oriented, and Time Bound.
So here is my goal: My goal is to have the ability to be aware of my gifts in the present moment and to feel happiness and contentment that I am able to draw on to inspire joy in my life and the lives of others. A bit lofty, and a bit long for a tattoo.
But thank you, Floricane, for the opportunity to focus on myself for a couple of hours and feel better about my life. It’s that simple and that satisfying. If that is not tattoo worthy, that a tattoo should be all about “you” (I thought of "Tattoo You," a nod to my favorite band of all time the Stones - BONUS!), then I don't know what is.
So, I may be getting a lips tattoo as a shorthand for my goal?? The green/yellow in me needs to build some consensus first.
