quality friday: achieving your goals

today was a wonderful reminder to me of how important it is to set goals, and how amazing it feels when you achieve them....

during the fall and winter of 2006, mark and i spent a lot of time talking about our future, about how we envisioned the next few years would unfold, and about when we thought we would start trying to add to our family. we made decisions, and mapped out timelines. we knew where we were headed and how we would get there. and we took comfort in the plans we were making, finally enjoying the feeling that we sorting ourselves out and figuring out where life was leading us.

then, in early 2007, our carefully mapped out plans began to shift as i was presented with a job opportunity that promised to change our life as we knew it. although we felt that the decisions we made were the correct ones for us, it was strange to so quickly depart from all of those well-made plans. as we've struggled and grown throughout this experience, i believe that we've also learned that not everything has to change as a result of my new gob and our upcoming move. we can still work towards our goals - accepting that sometimes we might need to reset them, while other times we may be able to find ways to work through and around our circumstances to continue to try to achieve those goals.

near the top of my list of things to i wanted to accomplish this year, was to run the chicago marathon. as it came time to register, i started to get nervous that it was too much of a commitment to, not only train for 26.2 miles, but to also have to consider the cost of traveling back to chicago to participate in it - not just for myself, but for mark as well. so i let go of this goal, let the registration close. i immediately found myself regretting it, wishing that i hadn't let the opportunity pass.

thankfully, i got another chance. this morning, i was able to take advantage of a special opportunity presented by the chicago area runners association and am now officially registered for the 30th anniversary of the largest marathon in the country. i've taken the first big step, and have set my sights on the goal!

then, just a bit later in the day, a colleague of mine stopped by to drop off a fund-raising check towards my race participation this weekend. this person had been mentioning for weeks that she wanted to support me, and had asked me for the details of making a donation on more than one occasion. as the end of the week (and end of my fund-raising efforts) approached, the subject wasn't breached again, and i figured that she had either forgotten all about it, or changed her mind.

as it turns out, neither was the case. she had decided to wait until the last day that she would see me for a specific reason. as she stopped by to drop off her donation, she said "i just wanted to make sure that you reached your goal". friends - this wonderfully sweet and amazing woman made an extremely generous donation to ensure that i did just that.

and finally, at the end of the day my company received notice of the approval of our first in a series of diagnostic tests that will help position us as leaders in molecular diagnostics. the results of years of hard work were finally felt today!

how's that for a day of setting and achieving goals?