August Motivational Calendar Page – What’s Your Mountain?

At the end of the 2021 school year, I had the privilege of talking with 6th grade social studies students. During the school year when they studied Ancient Mesopotamia, they read my middle-grade historical fiction book, The Bronze Dagger.  They were excitied to ask me questions about the writing process. One thing I encouraged them to do was to create goals for themselves. I told them that, as a writer, when I don’t set goals for myself, I hit them every time. In other words, nothing gets done!

This month, my life-goal is to continue scaling my mountain. July was a tough month. I stayed in the hospital with Mark for six days as he recovered from open-heart surgery. A week later I had a severe cough and spent five days in the hospital myself. We’re both doing well now, but trying to stay on our “lean and green” diet during that time proved difficult.

Emotionally and spiritually, it was also a difficult time. I wanted to “change mountains” and give up on several of my goals. Then, I recalled a song I heard many years ago, “Lead Me to the Rock.” It gave me great encouragement and comfort. In the form of a prayer, the song says, “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” After listening to it, I created a collage of people climbing a mountain. Viewing the images, I was reminded of four things. First, I need choose my goals wisely. Second, as an unskilled mountain climber, it’s wise for me to choose paths taken by others, planting my feet in footholds they’ve already discovered.  Third, I need to continually move forward in spite of the challenges. Notice the wall of ice in the third picture! Fourth, once I reach the top I need to enjoy the view, rest for a bit, and celebrate. However, I’ll probably notice another peak above me that wasn’t visible from below!

What’s your mountain? Have you created physical, emotional, social, and spiritual goals? Are you pursuing them? Have you found footholds to support you on your journey? If not, where can you go for help and motivation to move forward?

Hopefully, one or both of the songs I’ve linked to this month can help – “Lead Me to the Rock,” and an orchestral medley from the Sound of Music, and, especially, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” You can download and print the August calendar at this link. It can help you keep August’s goals, motivational words, and links in front of you each day. When I’m cooking my lean and green meals, I pull out my phone, hover the camera over the QR code shown on the calendar, and open the music links that pop up. That way, I can listen to all of the motivating music I’ve linked to each month since January, allowing the motivaltional melodies to make their way from my ears to my heart while cooking. I find that the songs replay themselves in my mind, unbidden, prompting me forward on my goals. I hope they do the same for you!

I’d love to hear if these thoughts are an encouragement to you, or learn what challenges  you may be currently facing. You can always drop me a line at: mesontag@gmail.com.

By the way, I recently created a downloadable file of my current lean and green meals, most of them found on Optavia sites. I included a table of contents for easy reference. You can download the recipe file here.

Marie