As part of our Unstoppable journey, we needed to come up with a list of goals that may be short or long term. In this assignment, we are going to look at goals that get us closer to our purpose in life. We need to pick 7-10 goals that are short-term and the same amount that are long-term. We will then look at what are the barriers that may hold me back from achieving these goals and how to overcome the barriers.

My Purpose

Make this world a better place by using my God-given talents to better serve the good of mankind.

Short-Term Goals

  • Get O his own Vtech camera in April 2016. - This actually happened last week. While I had originally targeted his birthday, my intuition told me to loook now - and thankfully, I did, as the Kidizoom camera that I wanted to get him isn’t in stores anymore and had to be ordered online. We took the camera out for its first trip on February 5 to a local farm. This was a goal so that my younger son could have his own camera and take pictures, giving us a peek at the world from our toddler’s point of view.
  • Make Easter cheese in March 2016. - Every year, my mom makes Easter cheese, and every year, I say I’ll learn how to make it. This year, I want to make the hrudka. This is in line with my purpose in that I can use my love of working in the kitchen to carry on a traditional recipe, which I may hopefully pass on to others.
  • Get O to speak more clearly. - Having gone through speech therapy as a kid - curse that jerk who put an ‘s’ in ‘lisp’! - I learned the power of clearly enunciating words. This helped me in teaching Lo to speak, and I’m looking forward to helping O learn more words quicker by going down that same path. He seems very responsive - less biting, more words. So there’s hope.
  • Take July off to spend time with family. - Having put a lot of my time into my career when I was younger, it has paid off in that I have flexible hours and can determine when I work.
  • Take a family trip to Niagara Falls (Canada side) for the boys to be exposed to life up there. - Love this place and would love to share it with my boys.
  • Meet one of my business idols before the end of Q3 2016.
  • Host a community-building event in the second half of 2016.

Long-Term Goals

  • Understand the difference between Montessori education, Waldorf education, unschooling and homeschooling clearly enough to know which option(s) may be considered for the boys’ schooling.
  • Take the family to Hong Kong to see where my mother-in-law grew up, the boys can meet family, and we can experience the culture in the old school Cantonese areas.
  • Self-publish a technical title on programming concepts by April 2017.
  • Learn more about steering my career into a direction where I am doing more coaching and building strong technical teams.
  • Teach the boys basic first-year level Spanish so they have other language skills in their skill sets
  • Submit a talk to a conference that isn’t frequented by the usual suspects.
  • Plan trips to London and Sydney before 2020 for the boys to see our family abroad.

Barriers and Overcoming Them

My barriers really are few in number, and the only true roadblock is myself.

For world travel, my barrier is passports. But to overcome this, I need to get one for myself and each of the kids. This isn’t a difficult hurdle to overcome.

For making Easter cheese, my barrier has always been excuses “but Mom will make it”, “but there’s always next Easter”, etc. No more excuses - it’s time I do this!

For hosting events, my roadblock is that I help others with their events and have put low priority on my own goals. However, I’m on a hackathon planning team for April, a big regional developer conference planning team for May, and helping with a non-profit tech weekend in July. I have a group that has approached me about a conference later this year, and I’ll help guide them. But 2016… this will be my year for me to focus on making my own events happen, even if it is in the second half of the year.

My goal of meeting one of my business idols has been hampered by my shyness. What makes it more ridiculous is that I have friends in the community who can introduce me to this one in particular, and I also am related to him by birth and have relatives who could make this connection. Somehow, though, my own shyness bites me - mostly because I admire the work he’s done and what has driven him so far in his career. So my barrier… it’s one that I keep getting better with overcoming as time goes on. I will do this - mark my words.

I have an outline for my technical title that I want to self-publish. The barrier there is time - and I just haven’t made it a huge priority. However, while my passion is ignited, I need to get this writing done.

So time, making things a priority, excuses… I own my barriers. I will achieve these goals - I am determined.