A Goal Setting…. what?!

After I married Scottie, there were a number of surprises that came my way.  How differently we each viewed the phrase, “just a few more minutes”, how dishes tended to appear in the sink out of thin air, and how much it apparently matters if you place the bread in the wrong part of the shopping cart…. were all just a few of the things that continued to astound me! But one of the biggest surprises I had after marrying Scottie was when he said he wanted us to have a “goal setting retreat” during our first year of marriage.  A what?

You have to understand, that up until that point, Scottie had been an excellent sport.  I (Breanna) received my bachelor’s degree in Family and Human Development from ASU (yes, that’s an actual degree) and continued on to work on my master’s in professional counseling (umm…. still not finished with that one).  Marriage and family were both of significant interest to me and something I spent years learning about…. all before I was actually married.  So when I got married, needless to say, I was so excited to get to put into practice all I had learned!  So Scottie sat through hour after hour of marriage classes, seminars, and of reading books on marriage to please his new bride!  He did participate fully, but I’m sure it wasn’t his first choice on how to spend his Sunday afternoons (he missed many NASCAR races for me).

So when Scottie Chanson actually initiated a “Goal Setting Retreat” I was stunned.  Way to go the extra mile, buddy!  I was thrilled even though I still didn’t actually know what that meant.

So we went out to the middle of the desert in tents, to find out what that meant. I know “retreat” makes you think of hammocks or lakes or something else pleasant, but we were newly weds and we were dirt broke….  so in the middle of the dirt is exactly where we found ourselves on this lovely “retreat”.

It ended up being awesome.  I knew I was married to a dreamer, and he knew he was married to a staunch realist, so this goal setting retreat really brought those two factors to light and helped us figure out how to mold his dreams into a shape that I could view as manageable (at least enough so that I didn’t have a massive aneurysm just thinking about all of it) so we could start making them into “our” dreams and begin accomplishing them.

(As a side note: I once interviewed about 200 people who had been or were currently married, and “having goals” came out as one of the top 5 things they thought were required for a successful marriage”.  Hum along with me know….”The More You Know”).

OK, all that way long explanation to say that we just returned from our 2nd Goal Setting Retreat (4 years after the first one).  This one found us, not in the desert, but rather, at someone else’s home where we dog-sat 2 crazy dogs.  Again, “retreat” doesn’t necessarily make you think of getting up BEFORE 5am every day to walk 2 humongous creatures, but that’s where our “retreat” took place this time!  Mostly because it was easier to take a few notes than to bring our entire computer set up so we could process pictures from that location.

This retreat took on a very different form than our last one and was a whole lot more work!  This time we own our own business.  Before we were like, “if you could have any job in the world, what would it be?” and this time we were like, “what are the quarterly numbers for our weenuses?” (That’s a “Friends” joke for all of you who feel left out right now).  Way less exciting.  But still very, very helpful and productive!

So now, all you Radiant Blog readers, can know that Scottie and Breanna are real grown-ups, with a real plan for their lives, and a real 5-year business plan!  Well OK, so it’s a 5 year business plan draft….  well OK, so it’s just a bunch of scribbled notes.  But we do have another goal setting retreat planned in about a month.  Put on another pot of coffee, it’s gonna be a long one!

Here are pics of our 2 ” business associates” we had at this meeting.

I didn’t mention, that this was where we had some of our meetings (you gotta do what you gotta do when the temperature gets over 100 degrees!)