Noemi Cardoso

On a conversation with a gym teacher about how full the class was today, he mentioned that most academies are at its fullest during the first 2 months of the year. Along with the New Year it also comes everybody's new resolutions. Goals to get in shape, to lose weight, to firm the body, to be more active and whatever reason people might have to include exercising and loosing weight into their New Year's resolution list. By March, however, statistics shows that 85% of these 'new students' have left and given up on their New Year's goal.

This conversation made me think about all the others goals most of us have. Made me wonder how many of us give out before we begin. How many give up at the first muscle ache pain, letting it go before really putting a serious effort and make it happen. How many keep on paying a monthly fee to the gym without ever showing their faces the fourth or fifth time but believing that as long they pay the fees there's still an 'intention' of being truthful to their goals? Where on our New Year's resolutions was said that was going to be easy? What challenge has ever been easy?

Intentions do not accomplish goals, actions do.

Like many, I also have my New Year's resolution list. However, it has a twist. I have a Notebook where I write them down. I keep them at my eye sight and review and work diligently on them. This notebook have one page for every annual goal and at the end I have a session for my life goals. Each page have the objective on the top and then a little questionnaire and achievement scores. Below is an example of my page on the loosing weight issue:

Goal - Lose weight. How much per month/week? Why? How? How often? Tools I will use to achieve this goal? People who can assist me on achieving this goal? How will achieving this goal, improve my life? How close it will bring me to my life dream? What is my biggest obstacle? How to overcome this obstacle?

These are direct questions and each one of them receive an even more direct and honest answer. There's no sugar coating, no cheating or white lies. It's truthful to all that I want and dream to achieve during the coming year and ultimately in my life.

I know, it sounds a little tad much for some, but the way I see, if most of us can spend 3 or 4 weeks planning a week vacation to the smallest detail such as choosing seat and food at an airplane where we will spend a meager 3 or 4 hours in, we not just can, but MUST spend the time working on our life plans and dreams with the same enthusiasm, determination and attention to details. Why plan a week vacation and leave our lives to coincidences?

For me this 'planning' usually takes about 2 weeks, working a couple of hours a day to finish. I start on reviewing my past year's goals, checking the ones I have achieved, how successful I was, what tools I used. Then I move to the ones I failed or haven't achieved yet, are they still goals I want to achieve? If so, I move them to my New Year's list and finally I move to add new ones, if any.

Each goal is a like a stepping stone towards my life dream. Each question receives a response, given with all my honesty and a realistic understanding of my daily activities, capabilities and responsibilities. I rather set a goal to lose a pound a week for 20 weeks and be able to stick to it and ultimatly succeed, than set to lose 4 pounds a week and fail on my first attempt knowing that it's the holiday season and I will be a social butterfly which will make difficult to follow a diet for example.

Yes, off course sometimes it doesn't work as perfect as I wanted. Sometimes I realize that one goal will actually not improve my life as I thought it would, and then, after trying. Some time I have to understand and accept that regardless of how much I want to run 5 miles a couple of days a week, that's not all possible with my back problems, but I sure can still speed walk 5 to 8 miles 3 or 4 times a week. Sometimes I have to adjust and mold myself next year to achieve those same goals. Some other times I have to look for assistance on people who might be able to assist me with giving me motivation, positive energy, professional experience, and even professional help (like a personal trainer or a nutricionist).

For me, the most interesting discovery during this process was to realize that when it comes to the question 'What's my biggest obstacle?' to find out that the response to each and every single goal, the obstacle I have to overcome is usually one: 'MYSELF'.

It's much easier to blame on others, on the weather, on luck, on genetics, on old habits, or whatever excuses we might create to make us feel better about ourselves, but the reality is only one - if we don't give our best to ourselves, no one else will.

Others and the world can, and will do whatever they may, but if I REALLY want something I WILL DO what I HAVE TO DO to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

I only know, I don't want to be just a number, lost in the midst of so many statistic researches. I don't want to be another point on that 85% statistic results, lost on a sea of people who quit before they even begin.

How about you?

Noemi Cardoso 01/02/2012

Regardless if others are looking, if others are there with you or not, if anyone else was invited...always do your best.....Be Ready...put your best dress, your sexy shoes, wear your best smile as a skin, think your best thoughts and go....be always true to yourself....THIS is the show of your life....make it a memorable one....you more than anyone else deserve it!

N. Cardoso 12/21/11

Someone, not too long ago, told me that I look to find meaning for things in life while he saw just the facts.

People say lots of things, and I usually filter things that I hear all day long, many just come and go without an impact, however some stays with me so I can digest, analyze and learn more about me and others. That comment, out of many, was the one that got stuck with me. I have thought much about that statement and came to realize that this person was absolutely right.

I recognize that I tend to see meaning in things. That I trust people come in and out of my life with a purpose, for a reason: to teach or to learn; to help or to be helped; to improve or to show us the tools to improve it. My objective is to keep my eyes, heart and mind open to what is to be learned. I believe that what I see and what comes back to me are just a reflection of my own acts and visions. If I am not happy with what is coming to me, the world around me is not the one to be blamed, I have to improve and perfect myself, changing the world is an impossible task, on changing myself, my views, my perspective I, somehow, am capable of changing the world around me. How I react to what happens to me, how I learn the lessons, how I become better on this being a human thing is actually what makes the world a better one.

With time and a little understanding I come to realize that the more I learn, the better life turns out to be. Even when we lose, we have something to gain, is just hard to see sometimes.

I think that if we look life as a simple mix of facts and coincidences, we will come to the conclusion that in fact at one point a man and a woman came together, his sperm fertilized her egg and, then an embryo was created, it was allowed to grow and brought into the world. Based on this 'all is a fact or coincidence theory', there was no purpose, no reason, no intention, no choices, nothing but the results of a biological fact. In the end we would be nothing but just another specie brought to occupy a vacant space in the planet. Then I ask, what's the difference between this being and a wild or domestic animal? The way I see there's none. It's hard for me to see life as such. The simple fact that we were given an evolved inteligence, to be able to create, to think, to chose comes with some responsability and possibility, it must mean something, doesn't?

The scientific fact above comes to me in a completely different perspective - I see two people who met, chose each other between all the others and fell in love with each other at some point, as a result of their love they married and conceived a child. A child who they chose to let be born, that they tendered and cared while still in the womb, that they dreamt about, prepared and planned for, considered names, tried to imagine how he or she would look like before was born and celebrated when was finally born. A child that they gave the best they knew or could. It doesn't matter if the best they knew and gave was the best for the child, but like life there are no manual, nor do-overs, some do their best and some do what they can...and from there we go on...whatever choices and opportunities those parents gave to that child will influence the person that child grows up to be as an adult, either good or bad. As we grow older, we have the opportunity to shape a better version of ourselves, chosing what might be better for us, like our parents we also make the wrong choices sometimes, and in many instances we need help from others...but there is always an option to improve, to align ourselves to what we plan to have or be in life. Still much of that inner person is a direct result of the teachings - parents, family, education, love, trust, respect or the lack of it and experiences - we have received as a child.

For me, the short connection with this person, even though he tells me was just a coincidence, had a meaning in my life. I've learned, through him, a lesson about myself which will allow me to improve my life.

Thinking about how this person sees life, I come to wish that unlike him, I never lose my sense of wonder about life, about my surroundings, about the meaning that people that come and go in my life have, that I never get too scared that I'll push everyone away, that I never lose faithm faith in humanity, in myself in life. I hope I never learn to be so simplistic about something so important as life, MY LIFE.

Dr. Mehmet Oz says 'Despite our best science, if a heart doesn't have a reason to keep beating, it won't....'

Even if we consider life to be so simple and black and white, if we pay a little attention we still can see, looking at a simple black and white picture, many nuances of whites and blacks in between, that gives us a valuable perception of distance, shadow, light, perspective and so much more. Nothing is just so simplistic as that.

And as Dr. Oz goes on to finish his though it recognizes that facts are all around us and they do occur, but the choices we make based on those same facts have much more meaning in our lives than what our senses can grasp in one simple, casual and careless look,

'... Find meaning and purpose in life. Nurture your relationships with loved ones. It's better than any medicine.'

Noemi Cardoso 12/12/2011

I stopped for lunch earlier and while sitting there quietly eating my salad, my attention was drawn to a mother and son talking. Our tables were so close that even without wanting to intrude there was no way I couldn't hear what they were talking about.

The boy was having some problems in his relationship...he was saying that his wife was really upset with him because of something he said. He had done everything he could think in order to explain himself and why he said what he said with no avail. The wife just thought he was a big fat jerk and was refusing to talk to him for a couple of days. His mom quietly listened to what he was saying...when he was done, without taking her eyes out of her clam chouder bowl she said..."Just apologize. Just say that you are sorry for what you've said and done". The boy looks at his mom and asks 'Apologize? For what? I said what I said, and that's it! She got to get over it. This is who I am'. Mom looks at hims and says "That's not the way it works. Unless you have plans to stick to yourself and live a lonely life you'll have to learn to give and take. If you really want to be in a relationship and you want peace and harmony in your marriage or in any other relationship in life, you got to get over yourself, your selfpride and be learn to be humble sometimes. This time around is time to apologize. Women, like men, like to hear 'I am sorry' once in a while. Don't you think she has said her share of 'I am sorries' regardless of how she felt about what she said or done just to make you feel better about yourself? Sometimes, when it comes to relationships we have to choose our battles, this time, this issue, is more important to her than it is to you, so just say 'I am sorry' and all will be okay. A relationship is much more than winning little battles. You got to learn to let the other person 'win' once in a while."

I was sitting there just a couple of feet away from them, wondering if he got the importance of those few words. How valuable they might be in his life, if he learns to pick his battles and let go of others....anyhow I think she made an impression because he just finished his salad without another word...

What a nice lesson she has thaught her son! Hopefully he'll make a good use of it. I am sure mom words were echoing in his mind.

Regardless of being a man or a woman, we don't have to 'win' every batlle if in the end the 'winning' means 'lossing'. Make sure to pick the battles that are really worth winning.