The path of our journey: Goals

A few days ago I talked about values and how they were the cardinal point on our personal compass. Today we are going to talk about why we need the personnel compass in the first place. The journey from where we are now to the place we want to be will be defined by our goals. Think of it like this: The end of each goal is the place where we make the next turn on our trip. If we do not know our north from our east we will get lost, the same is true in the journey of life without orienting ourselves to our personal compass we become lost in the wilderness of living. Without a compass we may become lost but without a goal we will not travel any farther.

But what exactly is a goal? It is more than a desire or a dream, it is not something we hope will happen, it is instead something we have put our mind to and said “I will make this happen.”

Goals must be realistic: When we set unrealistic goals for ourselves we do not increase our motivation, instead we create an atmosphere of defeat. While striving for something that we cannot achieve may make us go beyond what we thought we could do in the end we will still have fallen short and our natural reaction will not be to say look what I have done but to look at what we did not accomplish.

Am I saying that we should not set large or hard to achieve goals for our self. No! Without challenges there is no reward and there is no growth. Without reward and growth there is no point in going through the hard ship of personal growth. So look at your big goals then break them down in to smaller steps. Set goals of accomplishing those steps, building momentum towards the bigger goal and then one day when you are standing on top of the mountain you have climbed you can look back and say "I did that and you know what it wasn't that hard or that bad. Bring on the next one."

So what are your goals? Share with us in the comments.