Years, new and old

At the beginning of last year I wrote this blog post about how I hoped for 2015 to be.  My goal for the year was simple... to live stress free.

Did I achieve that?  No.

I don't think I ever can as I care too much.  If you don't care about anything then you don't stress.  But I do stress as I want to be a good person and I care.

As I write this blog I am entirely unsure whether what I am about to write is a positive or negative review of the past year.

I cut out as much of the negativity and stress from my life as I could last year.  Overall, I probably did have one of the best years of my life in terms of the experiences that I had and was part of.  But, with just a few months left until the end of the year I found myself feeling very lost, unfulfilled and questioning everything about my existence. 

The reason I am not sure if this is a positive or negative blog is because I experienced a lot of discomfort at the time with all these thoughts.  But without all of these thoughts I would not be able to progress and try to find the answers.

By cutting out all of the stress from my life, primarily my career, mortgage and commitments, I found my purpose had disappeared.  Even though I don't like going to the same place each day and doing the same job, I guess I do need to feel that I am helping the world in some way and working towards something.  

Removing all my commitments and doing the things that I thought would make me feel happy, all somehow felt very selfish and meaningless.  It was good to experience this though, as I would have otherwise dreamt of how great that would be all my life, and would've been aiming for the wrong goal.  I now see that to be fulfilled I need to be making more of an impact on the world around me.

This has set me up for hopefully having a more fulfilled and positive 2016.  I have done more thinking, talking and evaluating in the past few months than ever before.  I have set goals to improve and inspire the lives of others.  This does not mean I am giving up on traveling the world in search of adventure but it does mean I am doing it in a more meaningful manner.

This world is an amazing place.  The people in it are amazing.  If we look after our world and our people we can only become stronger.

Having contemplated my goals to set for 2016 for quite a while, I had some pretty solid aims in my head.  I then heard about the Duke of Edinburgh's Diamond Challenge and this basically summed up everything I had in my mind.  You can be involved in this too! The challenge is about setting personal, adventure and/or skill related goals.

Inspired by this idea, I have set my own goals:
Personal - Share more with others (see this blog)
Adventure - 7 peaks run, Australia, facilitate other peoples adventures, travel
Skill - To organise an all female adventure relay

I am sure that these goals are not going to be executed perfectly, they may not even happen, but its good to have a direction in my mind and take steps towards being satisfied.

What are your goals? What can you share this year?

Have a great 2016!