More on Goals, Plus Miscellany

I recently read an article about a study that looked at whether stating your goals publicly made you more or less likely to work toward and achieve them. The study found that going public with your goal made you feel like you were already on your way, and that goal seekers who didn't declare themselves didn't have that half-way there feeling, so they worked harder toward the goal. It was interesting to me, of course, because it has been and will continue to be a year of public goal setting. But my goals are small, and daily-ish, and accountability plays a big factor in this kind of habit-change goal-setting. I think the goals in the study were more about finishing law school and getting a good job, or something similar. I am not going to commit to anything like that in my new month resolutions...

On a slightly different note, I have read more than one article about how you should respond when people tell you about something difficult they are going through. One angle is that women tend to understand the importance of just listening and sympathizing, whereas men want to offer solutions to the situation. If this is true, I am definitely in touch with my masculine side, because I am all about offering unsolicited advice and trying (in my mind) to help create solutions. I think I have inherited a streak of overly-self-assured pragmatism, from my mom, her mom, even my dad's mom. This response, though, can mask the sympathy I genuinely feel. It seems like a lot of my friends are experiencing hard times right now- losses, illnesses, uncertainties. It makes me want to get better at just listening and showing I care without immediately forming a task force. Crap, now I have publicly declared my goal and am less likely to follow through...I am going to try, though.

Here's another public goal, related to the last paragraph- less complaining! I feel extremely lucky all the time, to have the friends and family and home and job and dog and so forth that I do. Good health. Health insurance. A well-stocked pantry (not now, but most of the time). A garage to park my reliable car in so I don't have to get soaked trying to get my kids out of their car seats. Car seats. Clean water that I don't have to walk miles for and carry in a big jug. A safe neighborhood. That bake-your-own pizza place three blocks away. Really, piles and piles of things go right in my life. So why do I complain so much? I'm locking it down. I know from endless work-related goal setting nonsense that I have to make my goal achievable, measurable, what was it... relevant? So I may have to frame this for myself a little more concretely. But I think I can get started without that.

On a completely unrelated note,

Bonus enrichments from Naomi's school experience:

Whacking herself on the face with an open palm over and over, in the world's most literal (though, not really funniest) manifestation of slapstick humor. Of course, Muriel also does it, always when there is food on her hands. Fun!

Derivative art. There is a girl in Naomi's class who draws really lovely flowers- lots of very uniform petals, always with a big swoopy rainbow in the sky above them. Now ALL of Naomi's art showcases flowers with a rainbow. In her defense, she does get a little Warholian with the image, making it small, making it big, putting it on the dresses of whatever princess she's drawing...

New vocabulary! I don't always feel like I'm the best mom I can be, that's for sure, but when Naomi came home from school saying that she "haked" something, I gave myself a hearty pat on the back. Because at the age of four, she wasn't familiar enough with the word "hate" to even say it properly when she finally learned it. Yea! Then of course I faced the dilemma of whether to correct her pronunciation. I hake it when my mom corrects my pronunciation.

Playing zombies. I can only imagine what this looks like on the playground, but at home it is just Naomi, saying "I am a zombeeeeee" in a not-quite-creepy-enough voice. Sadly, there is no walking with arms straight out (or is that only mummies who do that?), or twisty, sideways lurching like the zombies in the terrific movie, "Shaun of the Dead." She has passed this on to Muriel, though, so the other day they both had scarves draped over their heads, and were shuffling around saying "I am a zombeeee." Yes, I should have video-ed that instead of the twirling lesson. I know.