The clock hits the 12 and the cheers go up! It is a new year! After the cheers go up the reflections for the new year start. Now it is February and those well thought out or emotionally charged goals are starting to hurt or are requiring effort. Some may have even fallen by the wayside already!
Goals – the desire to achieve a plan. We all would love to lose those extra pounds, get more dollars, find that new partner, or achieve those things we have wanted for a long time. We all have dreams, desires but seeing them come to pass is different to just wishing to see them come to pass.
Sometimes the goal is to complete the goals that we reset from the year before, that were set the year before that!!!! Hands up if that is you!! It is definitely me!
I once heard it said that the only difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is the billionaire looks at his goals twice a day and not just once. I love how we set goals and then don’t look at them for the rest of the year or if we do it’s with a slight glance not a deep longing!
Like everyone else, I have made goals, failed at achieving goals, achieved goals, and reinvented goals, and still continue to make them. This year I wasn’t going to make any! I was going to sail into the new year on the boat of disillusionment and frustration .
But I succumbed! It took me about a week in to the new year. Paul and I were praying and each year we like to name our year prophetically. This year Paul called it – “Fulfillment.” We are in the process of a few projects and this thought started to resonate with me.
Eventually I started to set and refresh some goals and do the reset of the reset and start to believe that we will see them come to pass.
Some are so big they really are dreams! One year Paul and I sat down with brown paper and wrote and dreamed of what we would do if we had 100 million dollars. I found it last year and all of a sudden I am starting to dream again! One first goal is to keep looking at the goals!
I also am dreaming and planning of ways to see those 100 million dollar dreams come to pass. The 100 million is not for ourselves. Recently we were listening to sermons and reading about Joseph who had a dream. The purpose for his life was not just about him – it was to save the nations. That is our ultimate dream: To see nations saved!
Goal Setting
There is a curve, called the Sigmoid Curve, or S curve. It is like the ascending half of the bell curve, which shows that once you reach the pinnacle of anything, what follows then is a descent. The theory in terms of goal setting is that once you are half way up the curve, you need to set a new goal in order to keep moving upwards and not start the decline down the other side.
When I first learned of this curve it made a lot of sense to me and something I introduced in to my life.
To explain how it works think of an Olympian. They work for years for their 4 minute event. They win! Now where do they go from here. They have conquered their goal. They have made it! If they have no new goal set already they often slip into decline in terms of depression, substance abuse, etc etc.
The Bible puts it beautifully in Proverbs 29:18 Without a progressive vision, people dwell carelessly – or another translation says they cast of restraint. Goals keep us restrained and focused.
Turning 60 this year means I have a whole new set that I am looking at on my dream board but I also still have others to see eventuate. Yes I have a dream board as my screen back ground! I will not stop dreaming until I dream my last!
What about you? Next time I will talk about planning. This is the why and how of goal setting. It’s how we see them accomplished.
Until next time
Don’t stop dreaming!
Narelle
Green Peas and Other Green Stuff 