Happy March! Today, lovelies, I have some amazing stuff to share with you.

I first met Meg back in October at Lululemon’s BLEND {bloggers + friends} yoga event. Turns out that I’m not the only one doing some “redesigning & defining” of my goals, and Meg’s advice below has really set a fire in me to DO THIS {you know, life} the way that I want to. Meg’s the first Guest Blogger non-blogger to be featured on Designer Wife – she’s just that awesome. Read on and share your comments below!

First, meet Meg:

A little over a year ago, New Year’s Day 2010 to be accurate, I was standing on the top row of the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California wearing a t-shirt in January, taking in the sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains and watching Ohio State kick some Oregon duck tail, when it hit me –  I wished everyday could be as much fun as this day.  And then a more important breakthrough hit me – it can; but nobody’s going to do that for me – except me.  A Kenyon College graduate who claims Pittsburgh, PA as home, I’ve lived all over the country; I currently live and work in Charlotte, North Carolina.  My favorite movie is a close tie between Annie Hall and National Lampoon Vacation. I drink coffee every morning. And I laugh at something or another at least once an hour.

A couple of things I had to get over…

The first thing you need to know about me is that I question everything. Am I a skeptic? Sometimes. Am I a social critic? Often. Am I curious? Always.  With every new task, responsibility, opportunity, I’m going to ask a million questions – the hows and the whys.  The second thing you need to know is the first time someone asked me to write down a couple of goals was the second day of English class my freshman year of high school. Back story to this: three months before this second day of high school, my family and I moved from Dallas to Pittsburgh.

So, here I am, a high school freshman – high school freshman girl – and the new kid. The new kid asked to write down goals; goals that I would share with a slew of freshman girls and boys whom I met for the first time…yesterday. Yeah. Right. Like, I’m going to be honest on this assignment.  I knew these “classmates” for fifty minutes of my life, and I’m sharing my goals with them? And it’s Homecoming dance season, too; how do I do this without sounding completely…vulnerable? Why do I need to do this in English class?

I remember writing down a couple of ambiguous, sell-out goals – make new friends, get straight A’s, try out for the dance team.  It was homework for me – literally and figuratively – to complete and move on from. In looking back on it now, at age 27, I think I went into it at that age with that attitude because I felt scared. Because I didn’t know what I was doing.  Because I felt like writing down goals translated into something along the lines of ‘I’m not complete, so I’ve got to set some goals for myself to be complete.” Oh, freshman year of high school…

What I’ve come to understand over the last several years is that goals aren’t feedback for what I’m not – I design them for myself to get better at who I am.  Once I figured that out, a lot started to come together for me.  Getting to that point took some time.  A couple of things had to sink in for me to come to that realization.

These next 2.5 minutes aren’t about goal setting; they’re about what needs to happen before the goal setting which can sometimes be time a wee bit trickier to work through.  It was for me, at least.  And I speak to this from my personal experience as your every day, 27-year-old, single, young professional, college-educated girl.

There are five things I had to get over before I set goals.

1. They needed to be perfect. To be honest, I write that – “thinking they needed to be perfect” – and I don’t even really know what that means.  I think initially, for me, it was about the verbal and the visual; how they looked; how they sounded. And I was confusing the word ‘perfect’ with the word ‘right’.  Do they sound right? Do they look right?  Do they look like something someone like me should be striving for? Do they make me look more fun, exciting…cool? Oh my gosh. What am I – 15 years old? I let that go once I realized it was holding me back.

2. Thinking they were about anyone other than myself. It took me awhile to figure out what I wanted because I was thinking about what I heard everyone else wanted for me or what everyone else thought I needed. It’s hard to quiet those voices – especially when they’re parental units.  The only important part of this process is you – what’s important to you.  That’s easier said than done. I know.

3. They need to look impressive. Now, you should know I’ve been playing that “trying to look impressive” game longer than I’m willing to admit.  Truth of the matter is that it hasn’t really gotten me what I wanted.  Same thing happened when I found myself writing down ‘run a half-marathon’ only to figure out that I want absolutely nothing to do with that. I got 1/3 of the way into half-marathon training, injured because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, and hobbled through Thanksgiving weekend with family who had to slow down for me. All because I thought it sounded impressive.  And it does. I’m impressed when I hear people talk about marathon training or marathon success.  It’s just not something I need or I want.  I learned that the hard way.

4. Thinking they were set in stone. For a long time, I thought writing them down meant I was married to them. Well, guess what, you can change ‘em.  And they’re probably better when you do.

5. I only write goals for five or ten years down the line. I’m not going to say I don’t have goals for five or ten years down the line – I absolutely have marriage and parent-age in that vision – but, I got to tell you, I had a blast accomplishing my goal of seeing all of this year’s 10 Best Picture Oscar nominees with my sister. She and I set that intention together last month with the idea we wanted to see them all before Oscar Sunday.  It didn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Cool things happened after I started to get over a couple of things and set some goals I loved.  I filtered my world differently – yes, this is something I want or, no, I’ll walk away from that. Walking away from things that weren’t in my goals cleared some space for some things that were. Once that space was created, the adventure started.  Opportunities started to spring up.  I write down ‘take 3 cooking classes by August 2011’ and suddenly I’m reading and hearing about cooking classes all over Charlotte. I’m signed up for two right now.  Another great example: I write down – ‘publish 3 articles by October 2011”, I log onto ‘Designer Wife’, and I read Lindsay’s call for guest bloggers to which I respond.  The timing, the irony, and the opportunities opening up in quirky, fun, promising ways is enough to suspend the disbelief of at least one curious, social critic among us -  me.

What are some things that you feel you need to get over before you can make progress?

Feel free to contact Meg via email.