Lighthouses and getting unlost

Sometimes it is easy to get lost along the road to becoming the person we want to be. This is why goals are important; they can serve as landmarks along the way. When we get lost we can find the nearest hill, get to some high ground and try to spot a new route towards our goal.

I should be clear here the type of goal I am talking about is not the short-term things I need to do today kind of goals but the big goals the over arching things we are trying to achieve. These big picture goals are important not just to keep us on track but because they define the path we are taking. Without big picture goals we tend to move from one idea to another staggering drunkenly across the plains of our life.

So what are the important aspects of a large-scale goal?

It has to be relevant to our lives and the places we want to go in our lives: in other words if it is not our goal and does not connect with our values and dreams it will not be something that can lead us.

It has to be realistic: The goal must be one we can conceivably hope of accomplishing in our lifetime. This is not to say we cannot dream big but a goal that we cannot see a clear path to achieving is not a goal worth working towards. Also it does not matter if the path is clear to others, as long as we can see it and commit to making the dream a reality it is a worthy goal.

It has to be progressable: In other words progress on the goal must be visible; there should be smaller goals that make up the bigger goal. Large projects that have no resolution until some point in the future and no way of showing progress can be discouraging.

It has to be exiting: if our large goals are not exiting, if they do not make us want to work on them then we will not. Large gaols should be light houses to guide us back to where we want to be, and the fire that burns in them is our excitement for the results.

Update on school

Well the semester has been a long one, but the idea of taking back the battle field seems to be working. Classes have been attended tests taken and papers written and now we are easing in to finals week. My first final is today and I feel I am ready for it. This return to school has been a big success for me in my opinion, here is how it is going:

My Comparative religions class has had some interesting insights on the nature of the self and personal growth many of which have seeped in to my writing here. It has been a good class but the last few weeks have been a bit rushed. The testing in the class has been out of line with the presentation of the material however so this is the class I am least confident about my grade.

Speech 1A has been an interesting class covering diverse topics such as the way the mind relates to language, the structure of arguments and the impotence of confidence. I like to think I have given some good speeches in this class and have done well on the one written test we have had so far, one last exam to go and one more speech and I should have a good grade.

Journalism 1 this class has been interesting and a bit challenging, the model for writing news is very different then writing essays, blog posts or fiction. I have had to learn how to curb my opinion and just state the facts.

Critical thinking, I am not sure what to make of this class, it has felt like I get nothing at all out of the lectures but the process of writing the papers for this class has been the most taxing I have ever gone through. This class is the one I am most confident in getting an A in, all my papers so far have been A's and with just one more project to go I think I am fairly safe.

I will be back in school again for summer semester. This time taking a history class, intro to film and an excel cores to clean up my academic sins from earlier semesters.

Taking time to listen

The root of personal growth is self understanding. If we do not take the time to know who we are and what we want our growth will never lead to successes. We must take the time each day to listen to our selves to quite the world and come to understand who we are. These times are important for they give us an opportunity to understand why we do what we do and to know what we want.

The problem is we have to listen to the bad stuff as well as the good. When we start looking in to our hearts we see the doubt the worry and the things we don't like. These things are as much a part of who we are as the things we love about ourselves. Worries must be addressed; doubts must be examined to see if they are founded in act or are just meaningless fears. And the parts of us we don't like those are the areas we need to figure out how to work on, how to change and how to transform our selves to being the people we want to be

This process starts simply by listening to our own voice, and understanding where it is we are coming from.