Goals

At the beginning of each year a focus on starting new and making changes emerges. I personally love this! I've thought a lot about the purpose of setting goals and how they can be good and bad. On Sunday in Relief Society (the woman's organization in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) we had a lesson about setting goals and self assessment.

I appreciated the comments about how it is important to think about the motive behind our goal. The teacher used the example of losing 10lbs - a common enough New Year's Resolution. Instead of just setting a weight loss goal, ask yourself the reason for achieving this goal. Is it to be healthier? To feel more loved? To feel more comfortable in social settings? Depending on your motive, the goal may need to be modified - not just lose weight but eat better too or to work on your feelings of self-worth in other ways as well.

One sister in the class commented that at certain times in her life lessons like this would have made her feel awful because she was doing all she could to just keep afloat. At other times she would have been inspired and felt like she could conquer the world. Really, all we have to do is what we can, which is different at different times and in different ways. There is one scripture in particular that talks about this principle that I love. "And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order." Mosiah 4:27

Someone else told of a friend who once expressed the view that goals are just another chance to fail. That made me very sad. And, it made me reflect on the purpose of goals. I feel that goals provide us with road maps. They help us when we are deciding how to spend our time and when we are choosing between two good things - we can ask ourselves what will most help us towards our goal. Goals help us continue moving forward and up. They help us get closer to where we want to be - in many aspects of our lives - then we would without some kind of game plan and direction.

I think goals can be made for the wrong reasons. I believe goals can be too big for us to handle at the time we make them or in the time frame we give ourselves. However, I believe that goals are not successful only if we achieve them in the way and time initially intended. I think the fact that we can dream of something more or better than we have now is a success. I think that if goals help move us further down the path we've chosen, we've had success. Goals give us a chance to show we are not just accepting things the way they are, but actively shaping where we are going and what we will do along the way. That is a beautiful thing.