Do you remember going to the gym right after the New Year? It was packed. You couldn’t get onto your favorite machines. The cardio room was a sea of sweaty faces determined to make this THE year they finally lost weight.

What about those other resolutions?

Eat better.

Network more.

Go to bed earlier.

Get organized.

It’s February now. How are you doing on those resolutions? I was at the gym this week and was struck by its emptiness. Where did everyone go?

Another one bites the dust.

Most of us lose steam on our New Year’s resolutions well before February comes along.

Why?

I’ve been thinking a lot about goal setting and what I want to accomplish this year.

Because of my younger brother’s death right before the holidays, I’m behind in my own 2013 goals.

I’m okay with it though because I’m thinking differently about how I’m approaching my planning this year.

Two weeks ago I flew home to California to attend my brother’s memorial service. I had a lot of anxiety about going. We had to delay the memorial by month because of the police investigation into Bart’s death and holding a memorial nearly five weeks later felt like ripping a bandaid off a wound.

How would I handle all of the people wanting to talk about Bart?

What would I say about his life?

What if I started crying and couldn’t stop?

My worries were unfounded.

My mother made it her mission to make sure that Bart’s memorial was more of a celebration of his life than a teary goodbye.

My brother’s favorite foods were served at the reception: Chipotle burritos, pizza, pasta salad, chips and salsa, diet coke and chocolate cookies.

His favorite jazz music  was playing in the background. My sister put together a kick ass slide show with photos of my brother from his all too brief 38 years.

Then we told stories.

I was amazed at the many ways people remembered my brother. We shared stories about his love of sports, his obsession with fitness and his competitiveness even as a little child.

We talked about how important family was to him and how he constantly badgered our dad to eat better and get more exercise.

We talked about how much he loved his alma mater the University of Virginia and his fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi.

His friend Tom talked about Bart’s love of movies and his ability to quote whole passages from some of his favorite movie characters.

If you want to know what goals to set think about how you want to be remembered.

The memorial was an oral history of all the things that mattered to my brother.

A few days before I left my parent’s house my mother asked me to look through a few of Bart’s belongings she had set aside for me to take home.

My brother’s bi-polar disorder often made him messy, disorganized and incapable of following through on plans.

I wondered with some trepidation what my mother was planning to give me.

Out in the garage was a large plastic tub with hundreds of baseball cards neatly catalogued and archivally preserved.  I also found dozens of pristine comic books still in their original plastic covers.

Bart had been collecting baseball cards and comic books since high school. I knew this but I had no idea how serious a collector he really was.

The collection was worth thousands of dollars and my mother gave me her blessing to sell it to when it comes time to send D2 to college.

Suddenly it all made sense.

Bart had a Masters in Library Science and was getting a second degree in Information Sciences when he was killed. Research, meticulous cataloguing and archiving was something he knew how to do well and he used those skills to do something that brought him joy.

Going through his comic book and baseball collection made me see him in a different way.

It was clear that Bart spent a lot of time on the things that mattered to him: his fitness and his collections of music, comic books and baseball cards.

I wonder had he lived longer would he have more fully realized his incredible talents.

I think so.

On the plane ride back to home I reflected on the celebration of Bart’s life.

If you’ve never had someone close to you die, one of the worst things beyond the initial shock is going through your loved one’s belongings.

It’s a visual reminder that the person you knew and loved is truly gone.

Their belongings are a catalogue of what mattered most to them.

On that long flight home I started thinking about how many times I had set goals that weren’t very well thought out or that I had no intention of keeping but were carried over from the previous year.

Sometimes I set goals that in the scheme of my long-term plans weren’t very productive.

Sometimes I set goals that were too ambitious or that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to fulfill, like going to business school.

It took me years to get my act together. For years I talked about how I wanted to go to business school.

I thought a lot about it but never took any action. My inaction really bothered me but I just couldn’t get myself organized to apply to school.

The wrong goals drain your energy and take up mental space.

I eventually got my MBA a few years ago but it was only after Dr. D. called me on the carpet and told me to either do it or quit talking about it that I finally got off my duff.

So here’s the question.

If you have year after year of unfulfilled (or unfulfilling) goals what does that say about the decisions you are making and how you spend your time?

Look back at the goals and resolutions you made for the last few years.

How many did you accomplish?

What’s been the impact on your life?

What didn’t you do?

What’s been the impact on your life?

Too many of us set bullshit goals without really thinking about what truly matters.

Thinking about goal setting in the larger context of your capital ”L” life is heavy.

When you think about your legacy and how you want to be remembered, suddenly the decisions you make and the goals you set start to look a lot different.

But don’t freak out.

The point is don’t clutter your mind and life with lots of activity and stuff that ultimately doesn’t help you get to your higher purpose (what ever that may be).

My friend Deacon Tracey Hughes has written a terrific post on her blog Vine2Victory on an doable strategy to help make your goals and resolutions achievable.

If you need a bit more help (most of us do),  I also love blogger Jonathan Mead’s post on how to plan a visionary quest to help you gain clarity (and develop an action plan!) about your annual  goals.

So this year while I don’t have my plan all figured out,  I know this: No more bull shit goals.

Focus on the few things that will help you do what you love and care about. Focus on the things that make you better.

A better friend.

A better stamp collector.

A better mother.

A better gardener.

Whatever.

Just make it make matter. Make it worth remembering.

Your turn. How do you go about setting goals for yourself? What’s worked for you and what have you learned along the way? Share your thoughts in the comments. I’m listening.

 

 

 

 

 

On Saturday, December 8th my brother Bartholomew Williams, Bart to us, was shot and killed by Cal State San Bernardino campus police at his housing complex. My mother awakened me at 2:00am  Sunday morning with the news. She asked me if Dr. D. was nearby. My father recently had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his colon and was still feeling weak from the procedure. I thought she had called to say they were readmitting him to hospital.

Then came the news that hit me like an icy cold shower. “Your brother Bart was shot and killed last night by campus police,” she said. Her voice firm and steady.

Silence. I handed the phone to Dr. D.

My knees buckled and I was only vaguely aware that some how I had gone from standing to lying on the floor with my face in a pillow screaming. This cannot be happening. This cannot be happening. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. My brother Bart was dead. According to media reports, he was shot five times in the torso by two of the three police officers who were on the scene.

My brother had become one more in a long line of mentally ill people shot and killed by police.

According to media reports, my unarmed brother, who suffered from bipolar disorder, struggled with the police who then shot him in alleged self defense.

A lot of terrible things are being said about Bart in the media. People speculate that he was sniffing bath salts, that he was high on PCP or some other mind-altering drug, somehow inferring that he got what he asked for. The dark, menacing photo of Bart the media are running only reinforces this.

My brother was not nor had he ever been a drug addict. Like a lot of people suffering from bi-polar disorder though, my brother was a complicated individual who struggled to lead a life not defined by his diagnosis.

I feel compelled to share who my brother really was, not for sympathy but perhaps to engender compassion for people like Bart who live with a disease that is misunderstood and stigmatized.

First, a brief primer on bipolar disorder, a disease which affects more than 10 million people. I am by no means an expert but thanks to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) I learned a lot about this disease when my brother was first diagnosed as a college student.

As NAMI defines it, Bipolar disorder is a chronic illness with recurring episodes of mania and depression that can last from one day to months.

Bipolar disorder causes unusual and dramatic shifts in mood, energy and the ability to think clearly.

Cycles of high (manic) and low (depressive) moods may follow an irregular pattern that differs from the typical ups and downs experienced by most people.

People living with bipolar disorder often live with two intense emotional states. A manic state can be identified by feelings of extreme irritability and/or euphoria, along with several other symptoms during the same week such as agitation, surges of energy, reduced need for sleep, talkativeness, pleasure-seeking and increased risktaking behavior. On the other side, when an individual experiences symptoms of depression they feel extremely sad, hopeless and loss of energy.

The symptoms can be very different for different people. The treatment for bipolar disorder is lifelong medication and therapy.

My brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his early twenties as a college student at the University of Virginia. Up until that year he was a popular, gregarious young guy. From a young age, Bart loved politics and we would spend hours debating the latest political issue of the day.

I too am a political junkie and long after we had moved away from home, he’d often start our phone calls asking me my opinion about a particular political issue or scandal.

We also shared a love of sports and working out. Bart was a tremendous athlete who loved to swim, bike and run. He often talked about trying to qualify for the Iron Man. He watched his diet carefully and often hounded our french-fry loving dad about eating too much junk.

If it had been awhile since I’d seen him, he’d squeeze my arm to check my muscle tone or jokingly poke my side to see if my corporate job was making me soft. “Nice to see you keeping it tight, Sis,” he’d nod in approval when I was doing well.

Bart once dreamed of being a sports writer.

Ever the contrarian, he loved the outspoken KC Star sports columnist, Jason Whitlock. He loved how Jason called it as he saw it and didn’t give a damn about what people thought of him.

Even though he never became a sports writer, Bart managed to earn his first master’s degree in library science and was pursuing a second at Cal State San Bernardino when he was killed. When we spoke just two weeks ago, he told me he wanted to move to Europe to teach.

Bart enjoyed good food (growing up our dad was quite the gourmand) but what he really loved were Chipotle burritos, which I considered carb-laden gut bombs. When I’d visit him, I’d offer to take him out to the latest restaurant but he was happiest with a chicken and black bean burrito and a Diet Coke.

Bart hated being bipolar and after his diagnosis he struggled to make peace with it.

With my parents’ and NAMI’s help, Bart was able to live independently and work for long stretches. But bipolar disorder is a tricky disease. It can take years to find the right combination of medications and the side effects of some drugs were brutal. Extreme weight-gain, sleeplessness and tremors. Even worse was the numbed out feeling my brother described as like being a living zombie.

Drugs would work for awhile and then have to be adjusted or changed entirely. Getting used to new drug combinations wreaked havoc on his system.

Like many people suffering with bipolar disorder, Bart mourned his old life, the life he had before his diagnosis.

People who live with bipolar disorder suffer from a profound biographical disruption. They are no longer the person they were and don’t know or recognize the person they are. Bart couldn’t accept that he would be this “new” person for the rest of his life.  He never lost hope that one day he would get better and be back to his old self. Eighteen years after his diagnosis he was still trying to hold on to the person he used to be even as those memories receded further and further into the past.

We talked about the past a lot. He especially loved talking about his time in Charlottesville, VA where he briefly attended UVA and our childhood home of Del Mar, CA where we played at the beach as kids.

As the years passed, sometimes I’d see flashes of the old Bart I grew up with witty, observant and sensitive. But he had low periods as well where he would withdraw into himself only emerging to run or swim.  When he was cycling, he could say mean and hurtful things only to call or email you back and act as if nothing ever happened.

I tried to get used to Bart’s moods but sometimes my patience would wear thin and I would lose my temper and snap at him. I regret it.

Families with bipolar loved ones live on the knife’s edge

You wait for bad news that someone has hurt them or they have hurt someone.

As serious a disease as mental illness is, it doesn’t engender the same kind of compassion as cancer or other devastating diseases. The uneducated believe that if mentally ill people somehow just had more self-control or were better medicated, all of their problems would go away.  Not so.

Right before he died, Bart told me that he realized he didn’t have any pictures of his nephew, D2. Could I send him a few? I told him we had just finished our holiday pictures and I definitely would. Before we hung up he told me not to forget to send the pictures. That was the very last conversation I had with him.

As I write this today, my family doesn’t know all the facts surrounding my brother’s death.

What we do know is that my brother was registered as a disabled student at Cal State San Bernardino and was receiving his medications and counseling from the University health services. Very few media outlets have covered this fact.

We don’t know if the police who were called on the scene of my brother’s residence knew of his mental illness.

We don’t know why three armed police officers chose to use deadly force rather than other non-lethal options.

We don’t know if the three police officers responsible for Bart’s death were properly trained to deal with mentally ill people and de-escalate volatile situations.

So many questions and so few answers.

We are fortunate that a number of prominent civil rights organizations, including the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable and the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association,  have come to my family’s aid. We are working to get an independent investigation into the facts surrounding my brother’s death. We are also looking to strengthen policies that protect mentally ill people from becoming victims of excessive police force.

Earlier this week a reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked me what I wanted to come out of my brother’s case. What do I want?  I want better police training to deal with people with mental illness so that confrontations don’t result in their deaths. I want people to understand that mental illness is a devastating a disease as cancer and that people living with these diseases deserve our love, support and most importantly, advocacy.

Nothing will bring my brother Bart back but if I can help one person be just a bit more compassionate and understanding of people with mental illness, I will consider that a small measure of success.

I am hoping to share my brother’s story as broadly as I can. I hope you can help me by leaving comments in the comment section, linking up to this post, sharing it on your Facebook page and tweeting it.

My heartfelt thanks for your support.