Laurie's Blogs.

This week I have been reading and listening to blogs and audios that relate to goal setting for the New Year… and we’ll get to that next week.  But this week, for my own sanity (and perhaps for your benefit too), I want to review my year.  The first aspect in setting goals for the next year is to reflect upon the year that you had.  Good, bad, and ugly.  Celebrate your successes, acknowledge your shortcomings (and don’t beat yourself up for them), and simply think about all that you have been through, done, become, shed, etc.  So here we go!

January started with gratitude for my existing businesses – the growth of FourLeg.com and a strengthening of the Canine Fitness Centre.  I created a vision board for the year that I hung in my office.  Not all of my goals were fulfilled… but I succeeded or came close on some.  Here were my goals for 2014:  Get fit, put in hardwood floors, spend more time with my husband, kids, and out at our cottage, focus on happiness and enjoy my surroundings, be able to do things on the family ranch (take over some decision-making control), grow FourLeg.com to over 300 members, practice serenity, reduce my mortgage to certain amount and grow my bank account to a certain amount, go for massages, make money in many different currencies (and travel), have a line up a patients at the Canine Fitness Centre and hire two additional therapists, speak to a huge room of people, be a people-connector for others, win an award, sell 1000 copies of Successful Practitioners in Canine Rehabilitation and Physiotherapy, create a new centre called YYC Dog Sport & Wellness and a new group for Allied Animal Healthcare Practitioners.  Phew!  When I read this list… I sure didn’t get much accomplished!  And as such, perhaps my 2015 goals should be more balanced, realistic… or something else!  But I digress… that topic will be for next week!

What did I do?  I taught 8 courses and in doing so traveled to Calgary (my clinic), Las Vegas, New Jersey, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and California.  I attended two conferences, taking me to Edmonton (Canada) and Oregon.  And, I took my family on a vacation to Hawaii to a beautiful little beach house that we have been so fortunate to be able to visit twice now!  So, I guess I ‘got out of the house’ a time or two. 

FourLeg grew and I was delighted to continue to grow the educational library of information for members.  I didn’t hit 300 in members… but I didn’t push for it either.  I was pleased to create two course series: Myofascial Triggerpoint Mini Course and the Massage 101 course that is just finishing.  (The latter will be available as a course for purchase for non-members soon-ish...). 

I did get fitter… but not ‘smokin’ bomb-shell’ kind of fit.  Ah well.  I maintained my fitness regimen by going to the gym 3 days a week and in October, I switched it up by adding yoga.  Now I go to the gym twice a week and yoga twice a week.  However, my summer of learning to drink martini’s did not further the ‘smokin-hot’ fitness goal and I need to get back on track in 2015! 

My clinic, The Canine Fitness Centre, continued to grow this year.  We had some staff turn over, lost a therapist (it was a good move for her… so no hard feelings) and gained another.  I am happy to say that we have a really nice team right now. 

This summer, we did manage to get to the cottage every weekend.  It tends to be a nice ‘forced’ relaxation.  The summer was broken-up by going to Oregon for the International Symposium in Veterinary Rehabilitation & Physical Therapy.  I was an exhibitor this time and was so nervous about not going as a speaker.  I was afraid that I’d be alone in a corner, banished as an outcast!  Fortunately, plenty of people came to talk to me… so it was a success in that regard!  However when it was over I found that I was rather burnt out.

From mid August onward… I just sort of carried on in robot-mode.  I found it hard to get back to people about future teaching dates.   (Sorry to Antke, Sabine, Karen & Nycki, and others I may have forgotten.)  I found that thinking about anything other than what I had to get done week-to-week was difficult.  To help, I took up yoga as I mentioned above, I’ve tried an online meditation course, and I changed up my clinic working hours.  But to be honest, I’m still not quite ‘right’ just yet, so I’m looking forward to creating my goals for 2015 to help bring back my spark!!   And I have great suggestions on how to create goals that matter (and I’m not going to talk about S.M.A.R.T. goals… this will be totally ‘new’… it was to me – so I hope you like it too!) I’ll be doing mine this week!

There we go! So until next week… Cheers! 

Laurie