goal setting

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My Goal Setting Disaster

There is something about the beginning of a new year that sparks an urge in many of us to set goals or think of plans for the months ahead. New Year’s resolutions are at the top of people’s minds, with dreams of what the coming year will bring, and an anticipation of making those dreams come true.

For the last few years I’ve been following a plan to set my goals. I’m not naturally a goal setter; on my own, I’m more spur of the moment, but since that doesn’t jive with my world, I force myself to plan.

However, this year I’m having an issue right out of the gate. I’ve decided not to purchase the plan I’d been following in recent years; instead I’m going to try to set my goals with the materials I already have and the process I’m now familiar with.

The problem with that is it is now up to me to get going. I don’t have email reminders and links to motivational videos that press me into making time to get my goals down on paper in a manner that is realistic but challenging for the year.

Having a coach or trainer who encourages me to get going and to follow through has helped in the past, but this year I have to be coach, trainer and student.

I can do it, but there are times I feel a little schizophrenic, or like I’m having conversations with another part of myself – like the guy in the old movie, Taxi Driver. He stood in front of a mirror and started talking to his reflection, saying “Who are you looking at? You looking at me?”

I know I can get past this, and move myself on to set goals this year, but the other problem is time.

I’ve had a very busy Christmas season this year. Yes, I called it a “season” because, for me, there is about a six week span that is pretty much completely focused on Christmas.

I really haven’t had any down time to make room for setting goals. Normally there is a bit of a lull between Christmas and the first few days of January before it’s back to the regular pace.

I didn’t get that lull this year.

To do my goal setting the way I’ve been doing it the last few years, I need about thirty minutes each day for five days to pull it all together.

I’m not seeing that time this next week, and I’m away for most of the week after that.

It might not be until the end of January that I have the time to clear sufficient space in my life to set some goals. I don’t really like that plan, but it might be my only option.

On the other hand, though I feel overloaded, and like I don’t have a window of time to set my goals, I really only need thirty minutes a day. I should be able to squeeze thirty minutes into the next five days if I make it a goal.

Look, I’ve already set one goal!

Here’s the thing: The beginning of a year is a great time to make commitments of how you want to grow in your relationship with Christ for the coming year. It’s easy to put off; it’s easy to think it’s too late. But the best thing to do is decide right now when you will make your spiritual growth commitment for this year and then keep that date.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What do you find hardest about setting goals? Leave your comment below.

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Too Busy To Set Goals?

It’s a good feeling to complete a goal you’ve had for some time. When you have to squeeze that goal into an already tight schedule, there is a sense of relief when it’s done.

deck paint

Last summer Lily and I redid the deck at our cottage. We had all kinds of advice about how to get the old paint off – a huge, messy chore.

In the end, we used a liquid that was probably filled with all kinds of harmful and cancer-causing chemicals. It did a good job though. We may turn green and begin to glow in five years but we got the paint off.

Most people will then seal the wood with a stain of some kind, but before we did that we decided to clean the wood.

That’s right, good old water is not good enough to clean wood any more. You have to use another chemically-laden liquid to wash all that grit and grime out of the planks.

Well that worked too. It was amazing how bright the wood became. It took that grey, lifeless timber and we got it looking like we just chopped a tree down and sent it through the mill.

We were so impressed with how it turned out we decided not to stain it at all. Instead we are going to leave the deck unprotected. Can you believe that? Wood unprotected? There are probably laws against that but don’t tell anyone that’s what we did.

We figure that when it starts looking its age again (because right now it looks ten years younger than it really is), we will just clean the deck again with that rich chemical wash that seems to transform the wood back to its natural colour.

After doing all that, we also took the old railing off the deck and put on a new one, which really looks nice!

Last year at this time, we were proud of the work we had done. We were tired; it was hard work, but we felt really good … like we’d improved the cottage.

I like to take my time savouring those kinds of moments – like maybe for a couple of years or so.

But not Lily. She thought that it looked so good at our cottage, we should do the same thing with our deck at home. The idea was when we got back from vacation we would get busy on the home front.

What? Two decks in one year? I thought, “Who am I? A pastor or a guy who works on decks for a living?” … I put it off for the rest of the year.

But when this year began, Lily managed to sneak it on to our list of goals. We ended up being so busy, I even had to work on the deck on my birthday. But it looks great! … Lily wishes we had have done this five years ago. I wish we could buy a big ole retractable umbrella to give us a little shade on that deck.

Maybe that’s next year’s goal.

Here’s the thing: Set goals for growing in your relationship with God. Determine topics or books of the Bible you want to explore. This year I’m focussing on prayer. I’ve read four books on prayer since January. You might have to work hard – even sacrifice to accomplish those goals – but you are going to smile at the results when you reach them.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What more do you want to know about God or the Bible? Leave your comment below.

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It’s All About What We Believe

In my last post, I wrote about setting goals for the new year (click hear to read). In this one, I am going to share a secret that helps me do that. In my next post, I’ll share another secret.

ball and chain

Normally goal setting starts with dreaming of all the things you might want to accomplish. You brainstorm a million ideas, then select the best ones.

But I didn’t start there – I started in a place I had no desire to go.

I began with evaluating my limits … to be more precise, my limiting beliefs. And that’s very different from my limits.

I’m limited by a lot of things. I could blame my parents that I’m not six feet tall or have the mind of a rocket scientist. But that’s just genetics. I can’t do anything about that.

Everyone has limits.

But limiting beliefs, that’s a different matter. They are not really limits; they’re just a bar we set for ourselves that we don’t think we can get over.

The problem with those limiting beliefs is that we live up to them all the time … or should I say, we live under them every time.

What’s worse is they aren’t necessarily true; we just believe them to be true (limiting beliefs like, “I can’t do that”, “I’m a failure”, “No one cares”).

When it comes to goal setting, they keep us from accomplishing the goals we want to reach.

In the past, my limiting beliefs have been the mastermind behind me sabotaging my own goals.

They come from stories I’ve created based on my past experiences. Still, I believe the stories and live them out time and time again.

These limiting beliefs are ingrained in us and you can only change them by replacing them with new stories – a new story that overwrites the old one.

That’s not easy to do.

But this week as I was listing my limiting beliefs, I found a key to begin the process of overwriting those limiting beliefs.

It starts with a truth. Then you have to trust the truth enough to experience that truth in your life and thus write a new story.

It sounds simple but it takes some work.

For me, two truths from the Bible that I read right after I wrote my limiting beliefs will help me write some new stories.

1 John 5:14-15 says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” (NIV84)

We can ask God to help us overcome our limiting beliefs. He will hear us and answer.

Then Ephesians 3:20 says “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”(NIV84)

Now that’s powerful! Whatever you believe about yourself – whatever I have come to believe about myself – God is at work within us and can do more than we can even imagine.

The first step is to believe these truths, and then go out and experience the reality of them. If you do, you’ll replace that old story, with a new one.

Here’s the thing: If you want to grow deeper with God, if you want to see God work in your life, then address those limiting beliefs by believing and experiencing these truths from God’s words. Then write a new story through experience.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Do you have limiting beliefs that hold you back from all God wants for you? Leave your comment below.

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It’s Time to Look Ahead To Next Year

It’s that time once again to start looking ahead to what the next year will bring. And what it will bring is much more of what happened this year!

goal-setting

Now if that doesn’t sound all that appealing, then maybe it’s time to set some goals for 2015.

“Goals” – that’s a nasty word, isn’t it? Setting goals is often like setting oneself up to fail. Goals take thought, planning and following through. There’s a lot of work that goes into setting goals.

They’re not like scoring a goal in hockey. Those goals come suddenly, sometimes with no planning and not much effort. Sometimes you can score a goal just by being in the right place at the right time (with your stick on the ice, of course).

But setting goals – whether they are personal, career or family oriented – doesn’t come all that easily.

For many years I didn’t really set goals for the new year. As a pastor, the flow of ministry is more in line with a school year, so I make preaching plans from September to August.

I’ve never been one who makes New Year’s resolutions because to me they are nothing more than some good thoughts no one’s going to follow through on. I know I certainly won’t.

But last year I took an online goal setting seminar and set some goals for 2014. Now in December looking back, I accomplished many of them.

It was a positive experience so I’m going through the seminar again this year and am now in the midst of setting some new goals for 2015.

I’d like to say I met and exceeded all the goals I set for this past year but that only happened in my dream yesterday morning.

In reviewing my goals, I now see that two may have been a little unrealistic, and one I just never got down to working on.

That doesn’t mean I failed. I accomplished most of my goals and what I’m really pleased about is that three of them I didn’t start until six months into the year.

But having said that, this year I hope to improve. I think I know some key areas I can focus on to ensure I do.

One area is addressing my limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are beliefs about yourself that hold you back from accomplishing things you would like to do.

These beliefs will keep you from setting some goals you should set, and prevent you from accomplishing or completing some goals that you do set.

A second area that I am going to give more focus to this year is keeping my goals on my radar all year long.

You can set great goals at the beginning of the year, but if you don’t keep reviewing them, you easily forget about those goals you weren’t planning on starting right away.

In my next two blogs I’m going to write about how I’m addressing these two areas of my goal setting so that I have greater results than I did this year.

Here’s the thing: We have this great resource that tells us about God and His will for us called the Bible. However, most of us don’t refer to it very much. We use it more like a manual that you pull out when you need to figure out how to do something. We don’t actually read it. As we approach 2015, let me encourage you to set a goal of reading through God’s Word this year. Pick a reading plan, and commit to reading through God’s great book for you.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What’s your biggest blockage to reading through the Bible? Leave your comment below.