I enjoy spending time with my family on the beach. It’s a time that I can relax and enjoy quality time with those closest to me. It is also a time I can develop some creative thoughts.
One day while I was on the beach looking out over the emerald gulf waters, I saw several sailboats drifting at sea. As the wind went down and the sea became calm there was nothing for them to do but sit and wait for the wind to pick up. The sailing term for this windless time of drifting is irons. As these boats sat in irons, I could imagine the people’s frustration grow.
Many frustrated goal setters come into irons drifting along without a sail. It’s obvious that this person couldn’t make the boat move without the help of the wind. The thought soon came to my mind, how then can you successfully meet a goal without relying on God’s guidance to assist you along the way?
Setting goals is something practically everyone has done before. Successfully meeting them is something very few do. Why is that? Some say it is because only certain individuals are given the gift of achievement. I believe it’s more than that. There are several goal destroyers that we as individuals must face and overcome if we are to do what it takes to make our goals become a reality.
The first is fear. The fear of failing or being rejected continuously haunts us from becoming all we can. Your greatest obstacle to success will, many times, be your greatest fear in life. If we think of failing as a means to discover a way something doesn’t work, we can approach it in a totally different light. Successful goal achievers all have this trait in common. When asked how many times you failed, they will reply that they didn’t fail, they just found ways not to do it again. Failure breeds success. To try and fail takes courage. To fail to try takes nothing and leads to nothing.
Paul Harvey put it best when he said, “Someday I hope to enjoy enough of what the world calls success so that somebody will ask me what’s the secret of it?” I shall simply say this: I get up when I fall down.” There are success stories after success stories that deal with individuals striving to achieve a goal in life when failure seemed inevitable. One of my favorites dealt with a famous person who lived in the 1800s. It goes something like this: 1831 Failed in Business
1832 Defeated in Legislature
1833 Failed in Business
1834 Elected to Legislature
1835 Fiancé Died
1836 Suffered a nervous breakdown 1838 Defeated for speaker
1840 Defeated for elector
1843 Defeated for land officer 1844 Defeated for Congress
1846 Elected to Congress
1848 Defeated for Congress
1855 Defeated for Senate
1856 Defeated for Vice President
1858 Defeated for Senate
1860 Elected President of the United States
As you can see in the life of Abraham Lincoln failing and being rejected in life is part of the journey toward goal accomplishments. You might say without failure there is no success because the failures are what our successes are made of.
The second goal destroyer is procrastination. Most people mean well but simply do not follow through or carry out the things necessary to accomplish their goals. Procrastination destroys dreams and when dreams are destroyed people are destroyed. Procrastination leads to complacency and complacency is what is left of a person who believes he is satisfied where he is in life and because of past failures is afraid to step out of his comfort zone. The cure for procrastination is simple yet extremely difficult for those who encounter it. Those who have overcome this deadly goal destroyer have understood the cure from trial and error. It is to do or act upon whatever it is you are confronting. Nothing will happen unless you make it happen. You are the one that must act and do the things necessary to achieve your goals and ambitions. God will guide you but you and you alone must make the journey. “Well,” you may say, “someday I will.” I call that the goal achiever’s death rattle. Someday leads to the land of nowhere and the land of nowhere contains nothing. Be aware of these goal destroyers and do not allow them to keep your goals from becoming a reality. It truly is up to you.
In this article I wanted to show you not just to set but follow through on your goals. I could do this but if you do not set realistic goals no one can help you.
Look around you to see what I am saying. I see people establish goals that are no more designed for them than a goal to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger would be for me. I work out hard, watch what I eat and try to take care of myself. However, my genetics are not such to naturally grow to his size. Is a goal to look like him designed for me? Of course not! On the other hand a goal to be a certain weight, a certain size (within reason) and maintain physical fitness is a goal that could be tailored to me. So before we go any further, you must ask yourself a few simple questions.
First, are my goals in life spiritually sound? In other words, are they in line with my beliefs and desires in life? Second, am I willing to make sacrifices to achieve them? And third, do I have the persistence to keep my eyes focused when the world is constantly distracting me? Without a yes answer to each of these questions, you have already started with two strikes against you.
As someone who enjoyed the sport of shooting, I admire a good marksman. I have watched individuals with a steady hand never miss on the sporting clay course or consistently hit the bull’s- eye at the rifle range. If I told you that I could show you how to outshoot these individuals in one day, your response might be “yeah right Dallas.” But, if you’re physically capable, I can guarantee you that you can outshoot the best of them. How? Blindfold the one you are shooting against! Why that’s silly! How could anyone shoot consistently when they are blindfolded? They can’t even see the target! That’s correct. Now, here’s a profound question for you. If you can’t hit a target you can’t see, how can you hit a goal that’s not realistic? The answer—you can’t. As a matter of fact you can’t hit a goal not designed for you anymore than you can travel to a place that doesn’t exist.
Unless you have a definite plan of action, you will never reach your maximum potential in
life. You will never make it drifting in the irons of life. You must establish a target, take aim and fire ahead like a bullet without looking back.
You must be specific. You can’t be fuzzy or general about your goals. Saying I want to lose weight is general and fuzzy. Saying I want to lose weight by the end of the year is clearer, but still general. Saying I want to lose 25 pounds by a specific date is clear and specific. You must, of course, have action steps to follow to make it a reality.
We will discuss establishing goals in more detail later, but for now I hope you get the picture. Most of the time a goal when pursued and given up on was only inches away from attainment.
That reminds me of a story told by Napoleon Hill years ago. He told of a man by the name of R.U. Darby from Baltimore, Maryland that mined a gold vein following it to a point that eventually came to an end. After attempting to find the gold vein he decided to call it quits and sold the gold mine to a junk dealer. The junk dealer hired a mining expert that evaluated it and told him to keep digging. Three feet further he picked up the gold vein and it became the most profitable gold mine in the West at that time.
It takes persistence to reach our goals and at times it may seem like quitting is the thing to do. Anything worth having is worth working for. We must keep our sails in life up at all times, keep focused on our goals and allow the breath of God to push us toward our destination.
Often, we depend on ourselves to bring us through. True, we must believe in ourselves; however, if we do not humble ourselves to a power greater than ours, we will ultimately be humbled. You can climb the tree of life but be cautious how far up you go without submitting to God as your strength. Should your ego and pride take over, the tree may shake, and you will fall a long way down.
We all need help to keep focused and moving in the right direction. We also need to help others. People are all made different. Some need more help than others. Some seem to need little help. Regardless, we all need each other in difficult times as well as the times we are strong. As we travel the road of life, we will all at some time or another drift at sea. But if we have a plan of action and others to lean on and hold us accountable, we can accomplish more than we ever imagined.
Now that we have introduced goals and the devastating effects of drifting at sea, let’s examine their importance in your life.
In life we will find ourselves drifting at sea. But if we have a plan of action and others to lean on and hold us accountable, we can accomplish more than we ever imagined.
Now that we have introduced goals let’s examine how to determine if your goals are designed for you. As I explained earlier, you cannot attain a goal in your life that is unrealistic to you as an individual.
I see people establish goals to be something they are not or do something they are not physically capable of doing. New businesses have started and failed with goals of making millions the first year. There is nothing wrong with establishing goals that are large, but they also need to be realistic. I have seen countless individuals give up on a specific goal because of confusion and frustration that perhaps with some fine-tuning could be tailored to fit them. This frustration comes from not only missing a goal but falling so far short of it that it seems like establishing and working toward it was a waste of time. For instance, people will claim they are going to lose weight. They follow all the proper criteria for establishing the goal (i.e. specific time, action steps, etc.) But then
they set the amount to lose so high that although they were losing weight they quit because they were so far from their goal.
So how do you tailor a goal for yourself? First, you must submit your goals to God and be sure they are biblically sound by asking yourself the following questions:
- Do my goals inflict pain (physically or emotionally) on anyone?
- Will my goals cause me to turn my back on God by placing their accomplishments and attainment higher than He places on my priority list? In other words, are my goals so important that nothing else matters?
- Does praying about those goals cause an “uneasiness” within my spirit?
If you answered yes to any of the above, then you should reevaluate your goals and desires.
A goal should be a target that you strive for that has the ultimate outcome of bettering you and those you come in contact with based on your improvement.
Look at yourself from the outside in. By pretending you are someone else, you can see flaws in your desires that you normally would not. You have experienced this with others. Has someone ever told you something they were striving for that you knew was not in their best interest? They, on the other hand, based on emotional naivetes, are blinded to the world of reality only to find disappointment during the journey from here to there.
Use this phenomenon to your advantage and take an objective view of yourself. If you cannot, then find someone who has your best interest in mind that you can trust his or her opinion. Regardless, it’s an important part of being sure this goal is for you!
Now let’s take an example of a goal on losing weight and see how we can take a good goal on paper and turn it such a way that its design is no longer tailored to the individual. Jane, a young girl approximately 22 years old, wants to lose weight. She has all the criteria down for doing so. The goal is as follows:
Goal: Lose 15 lbs.
Time: 2 months
Action Steps: Low fat/low calorie diet with specific foods to be avoided. No snacking, no eating after 6:00 p.m. Drink at least 8 glasses of water per day.
Sounds good so far, doesn’t it? Now let’s take a look at Jane presently: Present weight: 100 lbs.
Height:5’5”
Self-esteem: Low (believes it will be better if she would just be thinner) Now what’s wrong with this picture? Does this young girl need to lose weight? Let’s take the test to find out if this goal is designed for her:
- Does this goal inflict pain on anyone?
- Will this goal cause her to turn her back on God?
- Would praying about this goal cause an “uneasiness” in her spirit?
I believe you will agree with me that the answers to the above are an obvious yes, yes and yes. First, the goal would inflict pain on her by physical damage based on the fact she would have to literally starve to lose this weight. She is already thin (possibly too thin) as it is. Furthermore, her parents would be emotionally harmed from her actions. Second, she would turn her back on God as
a priority in her life because she would be causing damage to her body and doing something that is wrong from all angles. Its importance to her would be too great. She would literally have to turn her back on her parents as well. Lastly, could she pray for this goal without an “uneasiness” about her? I doubt it.
Now let’s have her look from the outside in. We don’t have to spend much time on that one, do we? Anyone with our best interest in mind would say it’s wrong: don’t do it.
Do you see now how you can establish goals that are designed for you and why that’s important? By establishing goals that are designed and tailored for you and following these simple steps you too can increase your percentage of accomplished goals vs. established goals.
Stay Focused/Avoid Excuses. Keep your eyes focused on your target in life. You cannot reach a destination by looking back where you came from. When times get rough, and they will, you must keep your eyes focused on your goal. My prayer every morning is that I keep my eyes focused on the Lord, never deviating, never swaying. If along the way, you make a mistake, and you will, remember this: A mistake is nothing more than the beginning of learning how to do something right. Learn from it and go on.
In previous talks with other healthcare providers, I would tell them to keep their eyes focused on the goals they had established before them. I would often use an analogy of a successful doctor vs. an unsuccessful doctor with success being defined in office visits. When the unsuccessful doctor is ridiculed for trying to better him or herself, it goes directly to the part of the brain that causes the goals to become blurry and eventually focus is lost. Breaking out of a mold is too hard to this individual at the price of losing communion with the peers he or she has established. On the other hand, the successful person would not allow this sort of thing to distract her. She would let it roll off like water on duck’s feathers. Remember the duck theory? Don’t allow others to rain on your parade. Subscribe to the duck theory and stay focused. It’s your life. Live it the way God intended you to.
I hear too many people say they don’t have the time to establish goals. This is probably the biggest excuse of all, but I believe the real problem is much deeper than that. You see we can find time for the things we feel are important. Have you ever taken a look at yourself or someone else prior to taking a vacation? The amount of work that is put out is more than double that of an ordinary day. Why? Because we believe that we must take care of or do the work we would have normally done while at home prior to leaving. We make the time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we worked like this without a vacation to motivate us?
So if time isn’t it, what is? My opinion is it’s fear. Fear of failure. Fear of committing to something and falling short in front of others. The late Zig Ziglar said it so well when he described fear as “False Evidence Appearing Real.” Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
You will never accomplish the things you desire to in life without facing your fears head on. If your fear is what will others say, face it by telling them your goals. Let me warn you however, there are those goals you tell and those you don’t. For instance, losing weight would be one you should tell. Someone can then hold you accountable. If you fail, pick yourself up and try again. On the other hand, goals that involve a personal relationship with your spouse (family oriented) or with your relationship with God (spiritually oriented) may be ones you keep to yourself and share with only one that you can trust or not at all. Since we are all descendants of Adam, we all lack in many
areas and we all need help. Keep good your life count
for something, associate with those that believe and feel as you do. Don’t subject yourself to the outhouse syndrome. I know what you’re thinking. What’s the outhouse syndrome? Simply this, you may not be an outhouse, but if you sit in one long enough you will begin to smell like one. Like it or not. Likewise, if you associate with negative people long enough you will soak up negativity. No ifs, ands or buts about it! Organize your time, face your fears and avoid the outhouse syndrome. By doing so, you will find that you not only have the time, but you can also do it!
Let me summarize this chapter for you. You must have goals. The first and most important thing you can do with your life is to give yourself totally to the Lord. Once you have done that, realize that all of us must always work to be better fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, bosses, Christians, businessmen, businesswomen, etc. Based on that fact, we must have a specific goal or achieving point in mind to strive for. Although we will never be perfect, establishing and pursuing new goals in life brings the happiness that so many people are looking for every day.
So many are looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Look within. God can give you joy. Only you can give yourself happiness. Happiness begins with a purpose and goal to strive for. It’s been said that one of the most devastating things you can do with your life is to wake up one day and realize that you are not all that you can be because you failed to try. It’s your responsibility.
About the author
Dr. Dallas Humble is a healthcare provider, business owner, professional consultant, author and founder of The Reshape Institute. Dr. Humble consults with individuals and organizations across the country to improve productivity, identify & mitigate injuries and promote wellness. For more information visit www.dallashumble.com.
